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GENERAL JOFFRE 
AND HIS BATTLES 



GENERAL JOFFRE 
AND HIS BATTLES 



BY 

RAYMOND RECOULY 

(CAPTAIN X) 



WITH PORTRAIT AND MAPS 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1916 



:K3 



COPTRIGHT, 1916, BT 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



PubUshed October, 1916 




OCT 25 1916 

©CU446079 

1/1 ^ / 



PREFATORY NOTE 

The writer of the following pages is one 
of the many talented and devoted young 
Frenchmen who, loving life, now hold it 
lightly compared to their love of France. It 
has been Captain Recouly's good fortune to 
have a share in much of the fighting, while 
his position on the General Staff has brought 
him into close relation with the men by 
whom the fighting is planned. Readers of 
Scribnefs Magazine during the past year 
know him as **Captain X,'' and may be glad 
to have his articles collected in a permanent 
form. He also kept a journal while in the 
field during 1915, which was published as 
"La Bataille dans la For^t," under the pen- 
name of "Jean Lery." Part of this was used 



PREFATORY NOTE 

in his articles; the rest is here translated for 
the first time. As his work was necessarily 
done under difficult conditions, and not con- 
secutively, occasional overlappings and repe- 
titions may be found, but it has been thought 
that too much editing would take away from 
its freshness and simplicity. 



VI 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. General Joffre : The Victor of the Marne 3 

II. The French Offensive in Champagne . . 67 

III. Two Collaborators of General Joffre — 

General de Castelnau and General 

FocH 112 

IV. Journal of the Author 152 

V. The Battle of Verdun 235 



MAPS 



FACING 
PAGE, 



The battle of the Marne — position of the armies, 

September 5th and September loth, 1914 ... 22 

Position of German trenches and the progress of the 

French offensive 76 

The formidable series of German fortifications and 

trenches known as "The Hand of Massiges" . . 102 

Verdun and the surrounding region 254 

Relief map of Le Mort-Homme and the hills north of 

Verdun 272 



GENERAL JOFFRE AND HIS BATTLES 



General Joffre and His Battles 

I 

GENERAL JOFFRE: THE VICTOR OF 
THE MARNE 

TT was in the early days of September, 
-I 1914, those stirring and crowded days 
that preceded the great battle of the Mame. 
My division, retreating from Belgian Luxem- 
burg by way of Mezieres and Rethel, had 
just reached Vitry-les-Reims, some five miles 
north of Rheims. 

"This," I said to myself, "marks the end 
of our retreat. The Rheims forts, old as 
they are, will give us a fairly good base; and 
protected by them we shall give battle and 
win/' 

Notwithstanding our steady retirement, 
nothing could have been better than the 
morale of our army. Twice already our divi- 
sion had been pitted in serious and bloody 

3 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

battle against the Saxon army of Von Hansen. 
On each occasion, though confronted by 
forces superior to our own, we had inflicted 
heavy losses on the enemy and remained the 
uncontested masters of the field. Neverthe- 
less, after each battle the order to retreat 
(dictated, as we well knew, by considerations 
based on the situation along the entire front) 
had been given two or three hours later; and 
off we had started in the night, down the 
dark country roads, through the sleeping vil- 
lages, abandoning to the invader yet another 
portion of the sacred soil of France. 

"This time at least," said I to myself, "we 
shall stand firm and keep a solid grip above 
Rheims.*' 

And now, at about eleven o'clock at night, 
the head of the staff suddenly sent for me. 
"We are to evacuate Rheims,*' he said, "and 
continue our retreat. You must start at once 
for Tauxi^res and get our staff quarters ready. 
The division will begin to march at mid- 
night." 

4 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

I listened with a heavy heart. But there 
is this much good in the soldier's trade, that 
it leaves no time for discouragement. I had 
only ten minutes in which to wake my orderly 
and my chauffeur, to pack my belongings, 
and be off. 

It was a moonless night, but beautifully, 
divinely clear. The air trembled with soft, 
warm breezes. I took my place beside the 
chauffeur to help him find the road, which 
neither of us knew. Not a soul was stirring 
in the streets of Rheims. In the deep silence 
of the night not even a footfall awakened the 
deserted squares, and there were no lights in 
any of the houses. It was like an abandoned 
town. In my perplexity as to the right road 
I aimed for the cathedral, whose huge yet 
slender mass stained the night sky with a 
darker shadow. The lofty towers seemed al- 
most to touch the stars, and a mysterious 
serenity, emanating from them, enveloped 
the ancient city. 

I stopped at the door of one of the hotels 

5 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

in front of the cathedral and rang the bell. 
After a long delay the sleepy porter appeared. 
I asked him to show me the road, and he 
pointed it out, and then asked: "Captain, 
are our troops falling back? Are the Ger- 
mans coming?'' I had not the heart to lie 
to the poor fellow after waking him up at 
that hour. "The Germans will be here to- 
morrow evening," I said. "But we shall 
come back and drive them out again." 

As we climbed the slope among the famous 
vineyards, through Verzenay and Verzy, and 
began to cross the great forest of Rheims, my 
mind was full of dark thoughts, and of feel- 
ings of doubt and anguish. Should we suc- 
ceed in holding our own against this terrible 
foe, who had prepared his campaign down to 
the smallest details, who was spending men 
and ammunition recklessly, hurling against us 
ten, even a dozen, times in succession the 
close formations of his battalions, spreading 
panic in the country by ruthlessly burning 
every village in his path and shooting down 

6 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

the harmless inhabitants? In proportion as 
we retreated and as he advanced, his military 
strength and his certainty of victory were 
both bound to increase, like an avalanche 
gathering bulk as it sweeps down the moun- 
tainside. And as to our own soldiers, would 
not this continuous retreat finally affect their 
spirits and destroy the self-confidence, the 
obstinate, invincible faith in the destinies of 
France, which was the one condition of vic- 
tory whenever the great battle began? 

These disquieting thoughts continued to 
haunt me as we drove on through the night. 
But little by little, with the first approach of 
dawn, my sombre presentiments vanished. 
What mattered a few leagues of countryside, 
a few villages, and even towns, temporarily 
abandoned to the enemy? France, I saw, 
was not a mere expanse of territory, not only 
groups of houses or monuments of stone. 
The France of to-day is her army, and the 
army's spirit remains unsubdued. Never had 
indifference to fatigue, to suffering, and even 

7 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

to death, complete self-effacement, complete 
surrender of one's self, attained a higher de- 
gree in officers and in men. Never had the 
flower of heroism so magnificently bloomed. 
And the spirit of the average citizen at home 
was the same as the soldier's. From Paris, 
where one hears the very heart-beat of 
France, one of our comrades had sent me the 
day before the report of a little incident that 
had struck me as worthy of the great tradi- 
tions of Greece and Rome. As my friend 
came out of the church of the Madeleine and 
paused on the upper steps of the portico, a 
poorly but neatly dressed little boy, not 
more than ten years old, came up to him 
and pushed into his hand a bit of paper on 
which was written: "We must not despair; 
France cannot be beaten.'' My friend ran 
after the child and asked who had told him 
to distribute the paper. He learned that for 
two days and nights the boy's whole family 
—his mother, his two sisters, and an aged 
relative — had been steadily at work in their 

8 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

poor lodgings, writing several thousands of 
the papers which the lad was handing to 
passers-by. 

From the humblest soldier to the highest 
chiefs the entire French army has complete, 
imflinching faith in its commander-in-chief. 
From the very first engagements his firm and 
resolute hold upon the reins had inspired his 
troops with courage and confidence. The re- 
sult of our first encounters with the enemy 
had not been what we had hoped. The in- 
completeness of our organization, our lack of 
heavy artillery, our inadequate information 
as to the German army, all these deficiencies 
were cruelly evident in the early battles. Nor 
did all our generals display in the same de- 
gree the qualities of intelligence and energy 
required of a great military leader — for the 
simple reason that in times of peace it is all 
but impossible to prognosticate a general's 
worth in war. Only the test of battle gives 
the true measure of a general's merits. This 
or that brilliant reputation, won during the 

9 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

big manoeuvres, falls to pieces with the first 
crack of the rifle and the bursting of the first 
shells; while an officer on whom only slight 
hopes have been founded may display at the 
first test the qualities of a bom leader. 

From the o^itset, whenever General Joffre 
detected in his generals the slightest weakness 
of character or talent, he promptly and piti- 
lessly removed them. It mattered not if the: 
delinquents were among his oldest comrades,, 
his closest friends: they were at once replaced 
by those among their subordinates who, dur- 
ing the first battles, had established their 
military aptitude and their general superior- 
ity; and the entire army, by its silent verdict, 
its mute approbation, never failed to ratify^ 
these appointments. 

One of my chiefs had seen General Joffre 
at the general headquarters two days before 
our retreat from Rheims. He had brought 
back from the visit an impression of absolute 
confidence. "I mean to deliver the big bat- 
tle," the general had said to him, "in the 
most favorable conditions, at my own time,, 

lO 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

and on the ground I have chosen. If neces- 
sary, I shall continue to retreat. I shall bide 
my time. No consideration whatever will 
make me alter my plans.'' 

I recalled all this as the motor rushed along 
through the night, and as I repeated to my- 
self the words of the commander-in-chief, 
glorious with their hint of hope, our retreat 
seemed less unbearably painful. Since wait 
we must, we would wait. 

We had not to wait long. Three days 
later, on the morning of September 5th, just 
as we reached a point a little to the north 
of Fere-Champenoise, a sensational order was 
brought to us. The retreat of the French 
armies was at an end. That very evening 
preparations for a general attack were to be 
made, and on the morrow the whole army, 
from Paris to the Vosges, was to assume the 
offensive. 

The morning of the 6th of September, 
1914, marks a capital date in the history of 
the world. It was the beginning of the great 
tattle of the Mame. That morning General 

II 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

Joffre issued to our soldiers the great Order 
of the Day, which was read along the entire 
front. It reveals the unshakable confidence 
of the chief in his soldiers, and of the soldiers 
in their general: 

"At the moment of engaging a battle on 
which the fate of the country hangs it is 
necessary to remind every one that the time 
has passed for looking backward. Every 
effort must be made to attack and to drive 
back the enemy. The hour has come to 
advance at any cost, and to die where you 
stand rather than give way. In the present 
circumstances no weakness can be tolerated." 

For four days and four nights the battle 
raged. On the evening of the fourth day 
every one of the German armies was in full 
retreat. At certain points the retreat had 
turned into a rout. General Joffre and his 
army had won the biggest victory of all time. 

It is not too much to assert that a victory 
so complete, a recovery so startling, is with- 

12 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

out a parallel in military history. The only 
analogy it suggests is that of a wrestler, al- 
ready down, with shoulders all but touching, 
who, leaping suddenly to his feet, takes his 
antagonist by the throat, throws him and 
makes him bite the dust. It is not surprising 
that some people believed in a miracle. But 
there are no miracles in battle. Miracles in 
war are due, nine times out of ten, or even 
ninety-nine times out of a hundred, to the 
heroism of the men and the genius of their 
chiefs. 

General Jofifre plays an open game. He is 
never afraid to show his hand. When he had 
won the victory of the Mame he himself 
undertook to show how he had won it. He 
has just published the series of his "General 
Orders'' during the days before the great 
battle, from the 25th of August to the 6th 
of September, 1914. These despatches are 
official documents of indisputable authentic- 
ity and authority. They contain the irre- 
futable and naked truth, and they confirm 

13 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

the contention that the great battle of the 
Mame was clearly foreseen, and planned in 
all its details, by the commander-in-chief. 

The first of General Joffre's orders is dated 
August 25th; but before dwelling on its im- 
portance and significance it is necessary to 
outline briefly the respective situations, at 
that date, of the French and German armies. 

The French War Office was well aware of 
the plan of the German General Staff, which 
consisted in making a violent attack through 
Belgium, with the purpose of turning our left 
flank. All our officers knew that the German 
army would violate the neutrality of Belgium; 
but the enveloping movement of the German 
armies was made on a scale, and with an 
offensive dash, that entirely exceeded our ex- 
pectations. We had not supposed it possible 
that the Germans, on the first day, could 
bring their entire reserves into action. But 
that was what they did; and the striking force 
of their army corps was thereby more than 
doubled. Their reserve corps were ready to 

14 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

support the active army; and these reserves 
were exactly as well trained, as well equipped, 
and as abundantly provided with heavy ar- 
tillery as their active force. 

For years past the German Government 
had been spending at least twenty millions 
of marks a year to maintain, among their 
continental neighbors, and especially in 
France, a horde of spies who had penetrated 
everywhere and ferreted out all the secrets 
of our War Office. A country as peaceful 
and republican as France has neither the 
money nor the resources, even if it had the 
inclination, to indulge in such extravagances 
of espionage. The German aim was to finish 
with France within a few weeks, in order to 
have a free hand to deal with Russia, while 
the latter country was still struggling with 
the difficulties of mobilization. At the out- 
set, therefore, the Germans left a relatively 
small force on the Russian frontier: four 
corps of the active army (out of twenty-five 
and a half) and a few formations of the re- 

15 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

serve. All the rest — that is to say, about 
fifty army corps, or two million five hundred 
thousand men — ^were thrown at once against 
France. 

France, owing to her inferior population, 
was unable to provide so big an army to face 
this formidable onset. The fact of this in- 
feriority is one which cannot be too insis- 
tently dwelt upon. The French forces, at the 
opening of the war, must have been numer- 
ically inferior by at least a million men; while 
the British army, at the same date, num- 
bered three divisions, or from seventy to 
eighty thousand men at the most. 

What, in presence of the German plan, 
was to be the French retort? A plan based 
on the principle of the immediate offensive 
was held to be best suited to our national 
temperament and the well-known dash of 
our soldiers. Four simultaneous attacks were 
contemplated. The first was through upper 
Alsace toward Mulhouse; and Mulhouse was 
captured by us, then lost, and then a third 

i6 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

time retaken. But this was only a secondary 
episode of the war. 

Our second attack was through Lorraine 
and the passes of the Vosges, in the direction 
of Saarbourg and Saveme. After some suc- 
cesses on this frontier our troops, in the re- 
gion of Morhange, came upon largely superior 
forces and very strong positions which the 
Germans had had ample time to fortify. 
Heavy artillery, with which the enemy was 
abundantly provided, played an important 
part in these early engagements. We had 
to retire. Luneville was taken and Nancy 
threatened by German guns. 

Our third plan of attack was through Bel- 
gian Luxemburg, and here, too, we had to 
beat a retreat. 

Finally, our army on the left wing, sup- 
ported by the British, was to assume the 
offensive in Belgium, and make a flanking 
attack on the German army, while the latter 
sought, by an enveloping movement, to cross 
the Meuse between Liege and Namur. A 

17 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

little delay in carrying out this plan threw 
away our chance of success. The battle of 
Charleroi, where the Anglo-French armies 
were engaged against very large forces, was a 
virtual defeat. Germany had pitted against 
us the main bulk of her forces, and the 
English and French armies were compelled 
to begin a rapid retreat. This released Von 
Kluck's army, which was left free to plunge 
headlong, fifty kilometres at a stride, on its 
march to Paris. 

Such was the general situation about the 
22d of August, 1 914; such the imminent peril 
which General Joffre had to face. No heav- 
ier burden, no more formidable responsibility, 
ever weighed on human shoulders. A mo- 
ment's discouragement, an instant's hesita- 
tion, and France would have been lost, and 
Europe and the rest of the world left to dis- 
cover the meaning of such a disaster as the 
triumph of Germany. 

General Joifre did not have that moment's 
hesitation. He showed himself the immediate 

18 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

master of a situation of unparalleled danger. 
He might have chosen to dispute with the 
invader every inch of French territory; but 
such a plan would have entailed the gravest 
risks. It would have necessitated giving 
battle at once and in the most unfavorable 
conditions. Our army on the left, operating 
with the British army, would not have had 
time to pull itself together; and, given the im- 
mense number of men that the Germans were 
able to put into the field, our forces would 
have been exposed to an overwhelming defeat. 
The commander-in-chief's plan was of a 
much higher kind. He decided squarely to 
refuse battle both with his left wing and his 
centre and, while withdrawing these two 
armies, to carry out a fresh concentration of 
his forces which should quietly shift them 
from the east to the west. While Von Kluck 
was rapidly pushing southward, Joffre, with 
the object of turning his right fiank, as rapidly 
formed a fresh army under the command of 
General Manoury. Here is the order of the 

19 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

day (dated August 25th) which embodies this 
project: 

In the region of Amiens a fresh group of 
forces will be created by the units trans- 
ported by rail (Seventh Corps), the Fourth 
Division of Reserves, and perhaps another 
active army corps, formed between the 22d 
of August and 2d of September. 

Such was the origin of the army of Ma- 
noury, which, by menacing Von Kluck's 
forces, played so important a part during the 
battle of the Mame. The creation of this 
army was entirely due to the foresight of 
General Jofifre. 

Two days later, on August 27th, the com- 
mander-in-chief formed, at the very centre 
of the line, another army, which he placed 
under the command of one of our most emi- 
nent chiefs. General Foch. The creation of 
the Manoury army on the left, and of the 
Foch army in the centre — these are the two 
acts which contain in germ the victory on 
the Mame. 

20 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

It will be seen by the indisputable evidence 
of the dates above given that ten days be- 
fore the great battle General Joffre had made 
all his preparations for it. The fresh shift- 
ing of our forces, the mobilization by rail of 
the various army corps, was effected without 
a hitch, and it only remained to await devel- 
opments. Once Von Kluck had advanced 
sufficiently to uncover his right wing, thus 
exposing it to the attack of Manoury's army, 
the battle could begin. 

The right moment arrived on the 4th 
of September. On that day cavalry recon- 
noissances and the reports of the aviators 
showed that Von Kluck had turned south- 
east, toward Meaux and Coulommiers, well 
off the straight road to Paris. Instantly, 
on the afternoon of September 4th, General 
Joffre gave the order to attack. The main 
lines of this order are as follows: 

I. Advantage must be taken of the pre- 
carious situation of the first German army 
(Von Kluck) to bring to bear against it the 

21 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

forces of the Allied armies on the extreme 
left. All arrangements will be made on Sep- 
tember 5th, in view of an attack on the 6th. 

II. The disposition of forces to be ef- 
fected on the evening of the 5th of September 
will be: 

{a) All the forces at the disposal of the 
sixth army (Manoury), northwest of Meaux, 
must be ready to cross the Ourcq between 
Lizy-sur-Ourcq and May-en-Multien, in the 
general direction of Chateau-Thierry. For 
this operation the elements of the first cav- 
alry corps in the neighborhood will be placed 
under General Manoury's orders. 

(6) The British army on the Changis- 
Coulommiers front facing eastward will be 
ready to attack in the general direction of 
Montmirail. 

(c) The fifth army (General Franchet d'Es- 
perey), in slightly closer formation on the 
left, will take its position along the general 
line Courtacon-Estemay-Sezanne ready to at- 
tack in the general direction of south-north. 
The second cavalry corps will secure the con- 
nection between the British and the fifth 
army. 

22 




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THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE. 
Position of the armies, September s, 1914. 



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MARNE. 

iber lo, 1914. 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

(rf) The ninth army (General Foch) will 
cover the right of the fifth army and hold 
the southern approaches of the marshes of 
St.-Gond. A portion of its forces will take 
up their position on the plateau north of 
Sezanne. 

III. The offensive will be taken by these 
various armies on the morning of the 6th of 
September. (gigned) J. Joffre. 

On the morrow the fourth army, under 
General Langle de Gary, and the third army, 
under General Sarrail, received instructions 
in harmony with these general orders. 

All preparations had been made and all 
the orders given. Everything which it was 
humanly possible for a great commander to 
do in anticipation of a great battle had been 
done. The result depended on the capacity 
of the chiefs and the valor of the troops. 

Picture for a moment what must have 
been the state of mind of General Joffre on 
the 5th of September, the tragic hour on the 
eve of the great battle ! Here was a man of 



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5 10 20 3 itO 50 K' 

5' 10' ' 15' 20' zs' 30 Miles 



THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE. 
Position of the armies, September lo, 1914. 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

great moral elevation, of pure and ardent 
patriotism, intensely alive to the terrible re- 
sponsibility weighing upon him; a character 
of the old heroic mould, modest and reticent, 
disdainful of vulgar ambition and self-adver- 
tisement; and this man was aware that in 
the battle which was to be fought on the 
morrow the very existence of France was at 
stake. If the battle was lost, Paris would 
be taken and France conquered for all time. 

General Jofifre knew the tragic and des- 
perate nature of the crisis confronting him. 
With the fullest consciousness of that crisis, 
and moved by intense emotion, he despatched 
to the government at Bordeaux a telegram 
which, when it is made public, will show 
France that her chief is made of the stuff of 
Plutarch's men. 

The gist of the message was as follows: 
General Joffre informed the President of the 
Republic that he had done all he could to 
save the state, that the die was cast, and that 
it only remained to await results. His tone 

24 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

was calm and confident. He aflfirmed his 
conviction that the impending battle would 
be fought under conditions favorable to 
France. He described the enemy as being 
held in a vise between Paris and Verdun; he 
declared that the spirit of the troops had 
never been better, and he summed up by 
saying that the preponderance of chances was 
on our side. 

The wonderful forecast embodied in this 
despatch was soon to be realized. At the 
appointed moment all our armies opened a 
simultaneous attack. Manoury's army on 
the Ourcq so completely shattered one of 
Von Kluck's divisions that the German com- 
mander, threatened with immediate envelop- 
ment, was suddenly compelled to shift his 
forces to meet the British army. The Brit- 
ish army and that of General Franchet 
d'Esperey, taking advantage of this retreat, 
plunged straight ahead, drove the German 
corps back by a vigorous thrust, and in this 
way gained a good deal of ground toward the 

25 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

north. At the same time all our armies were 
advancing along the entire line from west to 
east, each army fastening itself to the one 
preceding it with the successive forward jerks 
of a parrot climbing along a stick. 

Those were soul-thrilling days. We who 
lived through them, in actual contact with 
them, knew that they marked a dividing line 
in our experience, and that henceforward ail 
we did and were would gravitate about that 
central moment of om* lives. 

The Gemians instantly saw the danger 
menacing them. They made a frantic effort 
to break through the centre of our line, be- 
tween Sezanne and Fere-Champenoise, in the 
region of the marshes of St.-Gond. The Im- 
perial Guard and all the picked troops were 
massed at that point. Their object was to 
overthrow Foch's army. By a series of re- 
peated onslaughts, led wdth the most reckless 
violence, they attempted to pierce our lines 
and cut our armies in two. Once this result 
obtained, they would only have had to fall 

26 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

back against our left and right to compass 
our defeat. 

At one time, on the third day and on the 
morning of the fourth (September 8th and 
9th), it looked very much as if they might 
succeed. They had pushed back the whole 
right wing of the army of Foch. The Guard 
had occupied Fere-Champenoise. But the 
left of Foch's army still clung desperately to 
the outskirts of the plateau overlooking the 
marshes of St.-Gond. In vain the Germans 
multiplied their attacks and wore themselves 
out in prodigious onslaughts. The Moroccan 
division, under General Humbert, held fast 
to every inch of ground, replying to each 
German thrust by a still more furious assault. 
Not for a single instant did General Foch 
admit the possibility of retreat. At a critical 
moment one of his officers came to him. 
"General, my troops are worn out !'* 

"So are the Germans. Attack!'' was the 
curt reply. 

At the most crucial period of the struggle 

27 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

General Foch conceived and executed a 
manoeuvre which, together with Manoury's 
movement, was one of the determining causes 
of victory. The right of Foch's army had 
given way, while the left was still holding 
out. Instantly he transferred an excellent 
division from left to right, taking the Ger- 
mans by an unexpected flanking movement 
and checking their advance. 

The Germans, far from being able to pierce 
our centre, were by this time in the gravest 
peril. On their right wing the situation of 
Von Kluck's army was becoming more and 
more critical: it was in imminent danger 
of envelopment. Everywhere the Germans* 
losses had been terrible — some of their regi- 
ments lost a third of their strength. More 
than once I have heard General Joffre say 
that this prodigious slaughter was one of 
the main causes of the German retreat. 

On the evejiing of September 9th the Kaiser 
was compelled to sign the general order for 
the retreat of the whole of his armies. Good- 

28 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

by to Paris, and the hope of a triumphal 
entry! The very troops which, a few days 
before, had swept so arrogantly through our 
villages now traversed them again with low- 
ered heads. In many instances the retreat 
turned into a veritable rout. The German 
troops seemed astounded by the sudden dis- 
aster — the repulse was a staggering one. 
Two days after the battle the proprietor of 
the principal hotel at Chalons-sur-Mame told 
me a characteristic anecdote. A German Gen- 
eral Staff had taken up its quarters in the 
hotel, which happens to be well known for its 
cellar. The general was a Royal Highness who 
was treated by the staff with the profound- 
est deference. On the evening of September 
9th the officers had all gone to bed after 
an excellent dinner and much riotous drink- 
ing. Toward midnight there were hurried 
steps in the passages and the prince and his 
staff, hastily roused, rushed out of their rooms 
in their night-clothes. "We must be off at 
once!*' shouted his Highness. "Order the 

29 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

motors! The French are here!'' In fifteen 
minutes the hotel was empty — the whole 
General Staff had vanished, forgetting, in 
then* panic, several cases of champagne of a 
vintage they had found greatly to tlieir taste. 
The moral of the story is that tlie French 
troops only arrived two days later. 

The victory of the Mame is immense, gigan- 
tic in character. It took place along a front 
of four hundred kilometres, which should 
be viewed as a whole — that is to say, from 
Paris to the Vosges — and not be studied 
at any isolated point of the line. The ten- 
dency to view it in that way has misled many 
people ignorant of all the facts of the cam- 
paign. They think only of the army of Ma- 
noury and its manoeuvre. They forget all 
the other elements at work, and imagine it 
was that single manoeu\Te which determined 
the victory. To do this is like looking 
through the small end of a telescope. It is 
as if some one at a concert, who happened 

30 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

to be seated close to the violin or the violon- 
cello, should conclude that the merits of the 
symphony were due to those two instruments 
alone. As a matter of fact, the applause is 
due to the leader of the whole orchestra, that 
is to say, to General Joffre. This is the in- 
evitable inference to be drawn from any 
rational examination of the facts. 

It is also said that but for Von Kluck's in- 
explicable manoeuvre in turning to the south- 
east on September 4th, instead of immediately 
attacking Paris, the victory of the Mame 
could not have been won, the capital would 
have fallen, and the war soon afterward have 
come to a disastrous end. All these asser- 
tions are equally mistaken. If Von Kluck 
was really in a position, on September 4th, to 
end the war at a single blow, and did not do 
it, he is undoubtedly the most inefficient 
general who has ever commanded a German 
army. And, if this is the case, it is hard to 
see why the Kaiser keeps him in command 
and showers honors and decorations on him, 

31 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

when he ought obviously to have been court- 
martialed and shot. 

It implies an unparalleled ignorance of 
military matters to suppose that the general 
at the head of one of the six or seven German 
armies then invading France was free to make 
so important a move without first getting 
into touch with the German General Staff. 
The truth is, Von Kluck could not dream of 
besieging Paris before getting well rid of 
those of our forces, in front and on his flank, 
which would have certainly fallen on him 
while he was engaged in the attack on the 
capital. He could not, and he had no right 
to, act otherwise than he did. It is an abso- 
lute rule of German strategy that the enemy's 
army must first be destroyed before the in- 
vestment of a fortified place is attempted. 
In the present instance this rule was impera- 
tive. For (as will some day be known) there 
was already too big a gap, there was in fact 
a veritable hole, between the army of Von 
Kluck and the other German army on his 

32 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

left. General JoiBfre, as has been seen, has 
not hesitated to publish the series of his mili- 
tary orders previous to the battle of the 
Mame. Whenever his example is followed 
in Germany, and the orders of the German 
General Staff are published, it will be seen 
which of the two series of documents is dis- 
tinguished by clearness and precision, and 
which is confused and vague. 

The German orders given before the battle 
of the Mame happen to be in the possession 
of our staff, and I have had the privilege of 
reading them. At that time the German 
General Staff used ciphered radiograms, and 
as we had discovered the cipher all the com- 
mimications of the German headquarters 
were immediately known to us. In the early 
days of the war the German War Office had 
but one purpose — to act rapidly and to strike 
hard. Strategic scruples did not hamper the 
German generals any more than diplomatic 
scruples hampered the German statesmen. 
The different German armies were engaged 

33 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

in a sort of steeplechase toward the centre 
of France. The fastest was to win the prize. 
The Germans were so confident in the force 
of their momentum that they fancied they 
could overwhelm and shatter everything they 
encountered. This confidence naturally grew 
in proportion as the French armies retreated. 
The Germans believed they were driving the 
French before them in headlong rout. They 
have never been brilliant psychologists, and 
the fine shades of the French temperament 
escaped their perspicacity, and doubtless 
always will. The fact is illustrated by the 
attitude and the utterances of Von Kluck 
on Sunday, September 6th, at Coulommiers. 
The picture is curious enough to claim a 
moment's attention, and we possess definite 
proof of its accuracy. Never have German 
pride and self-sufficiency broken out with 
finer effect. It is really worth while to record 
the attitude of Von Kluck on the day of the 
battle of the Mame. 
The French soldiers had evacuated Cou- 

34 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

lommiers the night before. During the night 
the German troops arrived, battalion after 
battaUon, and were immediately sent on 
toward the south. It was Sunday afternoon. 
The few inhabitants left in the little town 
had shut themselves into their houses. Sud- 
denly a hundred or more German soldiers 
carrying revolvers rushed into the main 
street, knocking at all the doors and shout- 
ing: "Shut the windows, the staff is coming !'' 
A quarter of an hour later, in a magnificent 
60 h.-p. car, his Excellency General von 
Kluck arrived. He took up his quarters in 
the finest house in the town. One of his 
officers, who had preceded him, had already 
ordered dinner: two dishes of meat, peas and 
pork (his Excellency's favorite dish), washed 
down with champagne, and a good deal of it. 
The general enjoyed his dinner and, when it 
was over, settled himself down in a big arm- 
chair in the doorway. He summoned the 
fine military band which always accompanies 
him. "Some French airs,'' he commanded: 

35 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

"Only French airs — Carmen, La Mascoite'' 
The band played La Mascotte and Car- 
meriy and Von Kluck's satisfaction increased. 
**Why don't the people turn up to listen to 
my band? They've never heard a better 
one!'* He sent an imperious summons to 
his aged hostess, who presented herself in 
fear and trembling. "Don't be afraid, ma- 
dam," he said affably. "Where are your 
husband and children?'' The poor woman 
said that her husband was dead and that her 
three sons were in the army. "Oh, well, 
they'll be Germans," returned Von Kluck 
consolingly; "and so will you. The half of 
France is going to be German, and it's the 
best thing that could happen to it. You'll 
see what we'll make of you when you've had 
a course of German discipline and culture. 
You French have a lot of showy qualities: 
what you want is discipline. We're going to 
defeat your army — the job is half done now 
— and by the end of the week we shall be in 
Paris." With this he allowed the poor lady 
to retire. 

36 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

The entire German army, from the soldiers 
to the generals, share the views of this typical 
chief. This is why it has made such a reck- 
less expenditure of energy, striking right and 
left to the point of exhaustion in its uncon- 
trollable frenzy of destruction. At the out- 
set of the war the whole German army shared 
Von Kluck's conviction that everything would 
be over in a few weeks. One day our regi- 
ment had been fighting from dawn until sun- 
set, withstanding seven or eight German at- 
tacks. Our men were utterly done up — 
they hardly had the strength to prepare their 
evening meal. We were all sure that that 
night the Germans, who were bound to be 
as tired as we were, and who had suffered 
enormous losses, would leave us time to get 
a few hours' sleep. But at about ten o'clock 
a terrible fusillade burst out suddenly all 
along the line of outposts — the quick-firing 
guns had begun the music which is so like 
the staccato notes of a mowing-machine bent 
on business. And thereupon there followed 
an astotmding, terrifying impression — a great 

37 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

shower of star shells burst out from beyond 
the German lines, shedding over the entire 
battle-field the fantastic, shifting gleams of 
Bengal fires. Then search-lights, suddenly 
unmasked, sent a flood of blinding light along 
our front; and at the same moment we saw 
a German column, at least three battalions 
strong, charging toward our lines. The men 
advanced in close formation, four by four, as 
if on parade. We saw distinctly the subal- 
terns and the officers, driving forward with 
the flat of their swords some soldiers who 
had fallen out of line. The regimental band 
was playing, fifes screaming, drums rolling. 
The whole astounding spectacle — the music, 
the illuminations, the brilliant search-lights, 
and the massed battalions — called forth from 
the colonel who was standing at my side: 
"It's the finest show I ever saw in my life !'' 
Our outposts had hastily retired. Almost 
instantly our machine guns opened an infer- 
nal fire against this magnificent target. The 
rifles came to the aid of the machine guns 
and were joined by our "75,'' which was still 

38 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

trained for action. Every shot made its 
mark in those serried columns. We saw- 
whole lines go down: it was like a gigantic 
game of ninepins. This attack, for all its 
insane temerity, was absolutely without re- 
sult, and almost the whole regiment must 
have been wiped out. During the four days 
and four nights of the battle of the Mame 
the Germans again and again rushed on death 
in the same way — the losses they suffered 
were appalling. Military critics, in Germany 
as well as in France, hold it to be an axiom 
that a troop which has lost by fire a quarter 
of its men is incapable of continuing the 
struggle, and the case of the Prussian Guard 
at St.-Privat is often cited as an instance. 
The cautious and reasonable Joffre is no 
spendthrift of his soldiers. At the battle of 
the Marne he indulged in no such luxury of 
hecatombs, and his self-restraint did not 
deprive him of victory. 

Photographs and portraits have made the 
face of the commander-in-chief familiar to 

39 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

the whole world. The impression he pro- 
duces is one of massive force and vigor. He 
is tall and robustly built, and there is great 
straightforwardness and kindness in his calm 
face crowned with white hair. I have often 
seen him at the general headquarters. They 
are situated in a delightful little town not 
far from Paris, a town kno^vn to all Ameri- 
cans who come to France; and the General 
Staff is lodged in a famous building familiar 
to visitors from overseas. The first impres- 
sion received on entering the headquarters is 
one of quiet and repose. Once I was sum- 
moned there at the very moment when a 
great battle was being fought in Flanders. 
From the particular spot in which I stood all 
orders were being sent out, and there all the 
information from the whole front converged. 
The General Staff headquaiters is both the 
heart and the brain of that gigantic organism, 
an army of three million men. One would 
have expected a scene of intense activity, a 
general sense of hurry and confusion; but 

40 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

nothing could less resemble what I saw. In 
the hall a few officers were passing to and fro 
with bundles of papers under their arms. In 
one comer a group of soldiers, bent over a 
table, were sealing some big envelopes. A 
lift took me to an upper story. I went down 
a narrow passage where two orderlies were 
on duty, and was ushered into the office of 
General Pelle, who is the right arm of the 
commander-in-chief. He wore the khaki of 
our Moroccan troops, whom he commanded 
before the war, and his handsome face looked 
somewhat thin and drawn from prolonged 
vigils and overwork. 

General Pelle was for some time our mili- 
tary attache in Berlin. He is thoroughly 
acquainted, not only with the German army, 
but with the German people. Our "Yellow 
Book'* contains a report by him, written in 
1912, which is a marvel of perspicacity, and 
even of prophetic insight. After a few mo- 
ments' talk, he told me that General Joffre 
would receive me at once, and without fur- 

41 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

ther ceremony he opened a door on the op- 
posite side of the room and led me into the 
great general's presence. The room was 
very small and furnished like an ordinary 
sitting-room in a small hotel. "The four 
feet square of my cabinet/' said Richelieu; 
Joffre, too, might speak of his "four feet 
square.'' 

The commander-in-chief was sitting at a 
small table on which there were two or three 
sheets of paper and a map. There is a look 
in his steel-blue eyes that all his photographs 
and portraits fail to show. It is a look that 
admits of no reply: there is finality in his 
glance. The minute and searching precision 
with which he questioned me about the ob- 
ject of my visit showed me that he knew in 
its smallest details every sector of the inter- 
minable front extending from the North Sea 
to the Vosges, from Nieuport almost up to 
Mulhouse. He listened attentively to my 
explanations, and put into a few words, the 
fewest possible, his observations and orders; 

42 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

then, with a vigorous handshake, he turned 
to other duties. 

General Joffre gets up every morning at 
five o'clock and is always in bed by nine in 
the evening. Strict orders are given not to 
wake him except in cases of emergency. 
Self-command and insight are the dominant 
qualities of a great military chief, and neither 
of these qualities is possible without a good 
sleep. As often as possible the general gets 
away from his headquarters to visit the front 
and inspect his troops. I recall a day, two 
weeks after the victory of the Mame, when 
we were near Rheims, at the fort of Mont- 
bre. From the outworks, which formed a 
splendid observatory, we had a view of the 
entire battle-field. As we were watching the 
results of our gun-fire on the German trenches 
just across the valley, suddenly, without 
warning. General Joffre arrived with General 
Foch. He had come to congratulate our 
chief, General Humbert, on his magnificent 
conduct during the battle of the Marne, and 

43 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

a few cordial, moving words conveyed his joy 
in his officer's achievement. 

Two powerful limousines for his officers 
and a third motor for detectives form the 
entire escort of the commander-in-chief. On 
his arrival at any particular point he reviews 
with the utmost care and precision the bat- 
talions under arms. He inspects everything, 
questions the soldiers, bestows decorations, 
showing an unflagging diligence in the fulfil- 
ment of this part of his duties, which brings 
him in constant personal contact with his 
men. After these inspections and reviews 
General Joffre and a dozen or more officers 
meet at a short military luncheon in some 
small town. The talk on these occasions is 
perfectly free from constraint, all the officers 
present frankly exchanging their impressions. 
The general himself does not say much — he 
has often been called "Joffre the Silent." 
But he does not dislike to hear others talk 
and has no objection to laughter and gay- 
ety; in fact, he is not without his own quiet 

44 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

sense of humor. I once heard it remarked 
in his presence that the mustaches and hair 
of many of our generals had grown suddenly 
white since the war. "It's the worry, the 
fatigue, the responsibility," somebody sug- 
gested. "No doubt," the chief agreed; "and 
perhaps also the lack of certain indispensable 
toilet articles." 

The conclusion to be drawn from all the 
conversations and all the isolated sayings of 
General Joffre is that he possesses an un- 
shakable belief in the successful issue of the 
present war. This robust faith emanates 
from him like a powerful current. It is a 
pity that all those who criticise and lament — 
their number in France is luckily not great 
— all the fault-finders and unbelievers — can- 
not be given a bath of confidence at our 
general headquarters. They would come back 
cured. 

General Joffre does not admit for an in- 
stant that there can be the slightest doubt 
as to our victory, our complete and compre- 

45 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

hensive victory. And his faith in the out- 
come is based on the fact that, over and 
above the daily incidents and accidents of 
the struggle, he perceives its deep realities 
and profound determining causes. These 
causes are all in our favor. Even taking 
matters at the worst, as far as we are con- 
cerned, even supposing that we never suc- 
ceed in breaking through the German lines 
and in driving the enemy back a kilometre; 
even in that case (and it is unthinkable) there 
remains for Germany the certainty of ulti- 
mate defeat and disaster. To consider only 
the question of reserves of soldiers, leaving 
aside the whole matter of money and other 
economic considerations, the resources of 
Germany and Austria are strictly limited. 
The day is at hand when these resources will 
be exhausted. Those of the Allies, on the 
contrary, are almost infinite; and victory is 
mathematically assured to them. 

Germany, seventeen years ago (the calcu- 
lation should be made from that date, since 

46 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

it is impossible to enlist soldiers under seven- 
teen years of age) had fifty-five millions of 
inhabitants: in other words, a third more 
than France. Since the beginning of the 
war she has formed twice as many army 
corps as we have, and this virtually means 
that, relatively to the figure of her popula- 
tion, she has accomplished a far greater mili- 
tary effort than we. For instance, while 
France out of a thousand inhabitants en- 
listed one himdred soldiers, Germany out of 
the same number enlisted from a hundred 
and twenty-five to a hundred and thirty. 
These figures are indisputable. Germany has 
drawn much more largely on her reserves 
than France, and they are bound to be much 
sooner exhausted. 

During the first months of the war the 
force left by Germany on the Russian front 
was relatively small — it represented scarcely 
an eighth part of her total strength. But as 
the Austrian army began to weaken and the 
menace of the Russian invasion of Hungary 

47 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

became more pressing, Germany had to come 
to the rescue of her ally. It was impossible 
for her to withdraw any considerable number 
of troops from the western front, as she has 
been inaccurately said to have done. She 
transferred only some cavalry divisions which 
were not particularly useful to her, and a 
certain amount of heavy artillery; but she 
placed on the Russian front a considerable 
portion of the fresh formations then being 
created in Germany. It is only necessary to 
consider the furious onslaughts in Poland 
and in Galicia, where battles last for more 
than a month, to know that relatively few 
of those fresh troops will ever be in a condi- 
tion to be brought back to the French or the 
Italian frontiers. In fact, by August or Sep- 
tember every time we kill or wound a Ger- 
man soldier on our front Germany will have 
increasing difficulty in finding a substitute; 
and the time will eventually come when it 
will be impossible for her to find any. That 
moment will strike the hour of her defeat. 

48 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

The whole aggressive plan of campaign of 
Germany was based on a short, sharp assault 
lasting a few weeks or a few months. That 
was why she did not scruple to expend her 
maximum force at the outset. At the very 
first shock she utilized everything she could 
dispose of; and hereafter her strength, in- 
stead of increasing, must steadily diminish. 
Our own, on the contrary, is in almost all 
respects as steadily increasing. We have 
abundant reserves of men, since, in contra- 
distinction to the German method, we have 
made only a small number of new formations. 
The English army is constantly growing, 
Italy is flinging into the melee her fresh 
troops, numbering, at the minimum, one mil- 
lion five hundred thousand men; and there 
still remains the inexhaustible reservoir of 
Russia. We are manufacturing more and 
more shells, and every day proves more em- 
phatically the preponderating part which 
ammunition plays in the present war. Fi- 
nally, our heavy artillery, which was deficient 

49 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

at the outset, is daily becoming more consid- 
erable. 

These are only some of the reasons, all as 
solid as granite, on which the robust opti- 
mism of General Joffre is based. When 
people speak to him in discouraging tones 
he merely shrugs his broad shoulders and 
smiles. The one thing to beware of, in his 
opinion, is impatience. Germany is virtually 
a besieged citadel. She is holding firm to 
the very last moment, she seems to be mak- 
ing light of her enemies, she never ceases to 
proclaim her invincibility. But some day 
the citadel will fall, and all will be over. 

Immediately after our victory on the 
Mame the Germans took to the trenches. 
That fact was of itself more than a half- 
confession of failure. For it should be noted 
that they might have retreated a little far- 
ther (as we ourselves had done two weeks 
before), and then manoeuvred in such a way 
as to deliver a new battle which, if they had 
won it, would have given them decisive re- 

50 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

suits. Instead of that they condemned them- 
selves to the wearing-out process of trench 
warfare, which precluded all possibility of a 
quick and resounding success. The hope of 
such a success is over for all time. It is no 
longer within their power to inflict on us the 
violent shattering blow they were so confi- 
dent of dealing. All the attacks they have 
attempted since the battle of the Mame have 
been checked: the effort to invest Verdun 
at the end of September, 1914, the advance 
on Calais, the battle of the Yser in September 
and October, 1914, the offensive movement 
against Soissons in January, 1915. Since this 
last attack, that is to say, for more than six 
months, they have not made a single serious 
assault against the French front. Since Janu- 
ary they have left to us the initiative and held 
themselves strictly and entirely on the defen- 
sive. They explain this inactivity by saying 
that they want to finish with the Russians 
once for all in order to be free to return with 
all their forces against the French. This ex- 

51 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

planation may satisfy the credulity of strate- 
gists beyond the Rhine, but two minutes' re- 
flection will show what it is worth. There is 
no such thing as finishing "once for air* with 
the Russians. However badly they may now 
and then be beaten (and Germany has in- 
flicted more than one serious defeat on them), 
the Russian forces invariably pull themselves 
together again and are ready almost at once 
to begin the struggle all over again. As 
Prince von Biilow has put it: "Fighting the 
Russians is like pounding a pillow.*' 

The Austro-Germans have just driven the 
Russians back about two hundred kilometres 
in Galicia. There can be no doubt as to the 
reality of the victory, but it is a victory that 
can have no lasting consequences. The Rus- 
sians, instead of giving battle on the Duna- 
jetz, are fighting on the Dniester; that is all ! 

Now, suppose that instead of this advance 
of two hundred kilometres on the eastern 
front Germany had been able to progress, 
say, some fifteen kilometres on the French 

52 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

front; that she had been able, for instance, 
to take Compiegne or Amiens. Would not 
the moral and material consequences of such 
an advance have been of a very different im- 
portance? Obviously, if Germany has not 
tried to do this, it is because she feels she is 
in no position to undertake it. 

Such considerations as these determine the 
confidence of General Joffre. Whenever he 
speaks (and he talks as little as possible) it 
is with such arguments as these that he de- 
velops his views, which may be summed up 
thus: "We have only to keep to the path 
that we are now following to be sure of vic- 
tory." For more than a month now, in the 
region about Arras, our armies have had an 
unbroken series of successes. It is true that 
they have been merely local successes; but 
some day one of these local successes will sud- 
denly assume the character of a general suc- 
cess ; and once Germany begins to be beaten 
her defeat will be rapid. The battle of the 
Mame marked the first short act of the war; 

53 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

the second act, played in the trenches, is a 
painful business, and is continuing longer 
than one would have supposed; but it is pos- 
sible that the third and last act will be as 
sliort as the first. 

In the solitude of St. Helena, Napoleon, 
who was not entirely without experience in 
such matters, often put to himself the ques- 
tion: **What are the qualities that make a 
great general?'' It is rare — so he concluded 
— to find in one and the same man all the 
necessary attributes. The first essential for 
a general is that his intelligence or talent 
should be in stable equilibrium with his 
character or courage. The general (to use 
Napoleon's phrase) should be "carre," that 
is, "four-square"; by which he meant that 
he should be well-balanced. It was another 
of Napoleon's sayings that a general who has 
more intelligence than character resembles a 
ship which carries too much sail: at the 
slightest whiff of wind it risks capsizing. He 

54 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

often cited as an instance his adopted son, 
Eugene Beauhamais, whom he sought, by 
advice and by daily correspondence, to form 
for a military career. According to Napo- 
leon, Prince Eugene was not marked by any 
exceptional gifts; but his faculties were so 
evenly balanced that he was nevertheless an 
excellent general. 

Nothing could be truer than these observa- 
tions; and they are marvellously applicable 
to General Joffre. The striking thing in his 
character is just this admirable balance, typi- 
cally French. His moral and intellectual 
qualities, his brains and his character, are 
in perfect equilibrium; and he is above all, 
and to the full extent of the word, what our 
seventeenth century called a "grand honnete 
homme.'' He is quite without ambition, 
utterly disinterested, and without any desire 
for popularity or self-advertisement. His one 
dream, when he has beaten Germany and 
given back to France her former frontiers, 
with the place due to her among nations, is 

55 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

to retire to his little home in the Pyrenees 
and end his days in peace. Among the Ger- 
man generals who have been pitted against 
him none can for a moment be compared with 
him. Joffre won the victory of the Mame. 
Apart from their partial successes at the out- 
set, the German generals who have fought in 
France have secured not one single victory. 
Only one German general has to his credit 
cer1:ain really big successes: Marshal von 
Hindenburg has more than once terribly 
beaten the Russians. But if Hindenburg is 
compared to Joffre an impartial judgment 
must give the French general the palm. The 
Russian army, when it is opposed to the Ger- 
man army, is in many important respects in 
a condition of unquestionable inferiority. It 
has at its disposal only a very rudimentary 
system of railways, and the railway is of 
capital importance in modem warfare. Its 
supply of ammunition has also, up to the 
present time, been utterly inadequate; and, 
owing to this double superiority, Hindenburg 

S6 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

has been able securely and rapidly to concen- 
trate his army corps against the Russians, 
and then to break through their lines by 
crushing them under a rain of shells. These 
considerations should never be left out of 
account in estimating his military merit. 
Hindenburg, if I may use a French phrase, 
has always "played on velvet," whereas 
Joffre has had to deal at every point with an 
army much better organized and infinitely 
better prepared than the French army. This 
fact proportionately enhances the praise to 
which he is entitled. 

Journal of the Author 

September 11th, 1915. — Flameng, the painter, 
is in Argonne, making a series of very interest- 
ing sketches of our battle-fields. These stud- 
ies, which are done with the utmost care and 
exactness, will be a most valuable contribu- 
tion toward the history of the war. As he 
had expressed a wish to see the Chateau of 
Mondement, I was detailed to accompany 

57 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

him, of which I was very glad, and we set off 
on a radiant morning. 

The road from Vitry-le-Frangois to Fere- 
Champenoise follows pretty closely the line 
of part of the battle of the Mame. It was a 
year, almost to the day, since we won that 
great victory, which seems greater and more 
important as one gets further away from it; 
the lapse of time cannot fail to throw it into 
yet higher relief. 

The harmonious unity of that tremendous 
contest is as striking as the immensity of its 
front. It is as measured and regulated as 
one of Racine's tragedies, or a formal French 
garden. Each of the elements of which it is 
made up depends upon the element next to 
it; the play of many forces, distinct yet con- 
verging, give to this great military event its 
crowning significance. 

At Fere-Champenoise we took the road to 
Bannes. Here we came upon the line of 
Morin and the famous marshes of St.- 
Gond, marshes which are almost always, by 

58 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

the way, without water. The Germans had 
planted their heavy artillery on the heights 
above them to the north, and from there 
they could shell us with deadly accuracy. 

In the villages through which we went 
the damage done by the war was being 
repaired; new roofs everywhere replaced 
those which the shells had shattered. The 
industry of our peasants, the elasticity of 
our race, which, however it may bend to 
the storm, springs back with all its vigor, is 
seen here in its full beauty. Women instead 
of men were working in the fields, but not 
one field was uncultivated. It was only just 
a year since war had been raging in these 
very places, and already it seemed remote, 
far back in the wide spaces of time. 

I was eager to see Mondement again, for it 
was there that my division (the first division 
of Moroccan infantry) had made such a mag- 
nificent stand at the battle of the Marne. 
The most impressive view of the chateau is 
from the road beside the marshes of St.-Gond, 

59 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

as it stands on the edge of a high ridge, 
lifting its feudal outline proudly against the 
sky, and dominating with its heavy walls 
and towers the wide plain which lies below. 
It was on the plain that the battle was most 
furious, and from there the Germans hurled 
themselves on the ridge, after two days and 
two nights of terrific bombardment. 

The chateau looks very much as when we 
left it after that fierce struggle on the 9th of 
September. The Germans had finally suc- 
ceeded in taking it the night before; General 
Humbert, who commanded the Moroccan 
division, made up his mind to take it back 
again, no matter at what cost. And we did 
retake it, but only at the third assault, as 
night was closing in, much helped in this 
last attack by two guns which our men very 
pluckily dragged up the steep slope and 
planted only a few hundred yards from the 
chateau, so that we could pour grape-shot 
on the Germans while they still held it, and 
also as they tried to get away. 

60 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

The day after that bloody struggle the 
chateau of Mondement was an extraordinary 
sight. The iron gates and railings of its 
forecourt were twisted and broken, the thick 
house walls were pierced everywhere by shells 
and in some places crumbling altogether, while 
parts of the roofs were ready to fall in. Some 
of the outbuildings which had been burned 
down were still smouldering. This was the 
setting for a swarming and seething mass of 
infantry, Zouaves, woimded and dying men, 
with German prisoners by the hundred. 

And although twelve months have passed, 
everything still bears mute witness to the 
violence and intensity of the conflict. The 
owner has been satisfied with repairing the 
main part of the roof in a summary manner, 
which takes away from the picturesqueness 
of the ruins; the hideous patch of new slates 
contrasts ill with the fire-scorched stones and 
charred beams. Where the stables and out- 
buildings stood a little heap of ashes and rusty 
iron is all that is left of his luxurious limousine. 

6i 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

Nature, however, is already coming into 
her own again, and under this flood of sun- 
light, in this soft air, the chateau does not 
convey any impression of sadness or gloom. 
Mondement bears its scars gallantly, like a 
strong fighting man who holds his head high 
and looks the future in the face. 

At the back of the main building a great 
breach was made in the surrounding walls, 
and through it we went into what was 
the garden, now overgrown with flourishing 
weeds, among which some flowering plants 
struggle patiently. While our infantrymen 
attacked the principal entrance, it was here 
that the Zouaves made their assault. The 
Germans, threatened on all sides, within a 
hand's breadth of being surrounded, suddenly 
took to flight, jumping out of the second- 
story windows and tumbling over the walls. 

What a setting for a war picture — the 
stem old tower in the comer with the swarm 
of Teutons, hunted hard by our men, pour- 
ing out headlong and running for dear life! 

62 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

No wonder that my companion was carried 
away by it, and set to work on his sketch at 
once. 

Many of the huge old trees in the park 
were split and battered by shells, which 
made me remember one tragic incident of 
the battle. The Germans had brought very 
heavy artillery fire to bear on the chateau, 
from which General Humbert was directing 
the fighting. One of my comrades was stand- 
ing waiting for orders when M. Baur, the 
surgeon-in-chief, said to him: "Why do you 
expose yourself so unnecessarily? Do as I 
am doing — stand behind a tree.'' Two min- 
utes afterward an enormous shell struck full 
on that very tree, cutting it in two as if it 
had been a match, and killing the surgeon 
instantly. My friend, who had remained 
quietly standing twenty yards away, was not 
even scratched. Such are the chances of 
war and destiny! 

A few days before that, German shells had 
been falling fast into a field occupied by 

63 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

some Zouaves, and making great holes in 
the ground. The officer in command, seeing 
that one of the men looked rather uneasy, 
said to him, half in joke and half in earnest: 
"Do you want me to show you a sure way 
not to be hit? Put yourself into the next 
hole made by a shell; two never strili:e in 
the same place/' A big, funnel-shaped hole 
opened close beside him as he spoke, and to 
practise what he preached he crept into it. 
A few seconds afterward another shell did 
strike exactly in the same place, smashing him 
into a jelly. 

Near the road which leads to Broye, a 
churchyard, always decorated with flags and 
flowers, is full of the graves of French sol- 
diers, killed close around the chateau. The 
little church to which it belongs had a very 
hard time during the bombai'dment. On the 
morning of September 10th, before we left 
Mondement, the general and some of his offi- 
cers went there to the funeral of the surgeon- 
in-chief. It was an impressive ceremony. The 

64 



THE VICTOR OF THE MARNE 

walls were full of gaping holes, the roof- 
less choir open to the sky; a soldier-priest 
recited rapidly the prayers for the dead, and 
then we left our comrade in one of the many 
hastily made graves. 

The wounds of the little church are not yet 
healed, but the worst holes have been cov- 
ered with big pieces of canvas. On one of 
the walls is a list of the names of officers of the 
77th who fell in the attack on the chateau, 
that intrepid regiment which, helped by the 
Zouaves of the Moroccan division, finally 
wrested Mondement from the enemy. I can 
see it still, climbing the steep ascent at Broye, 
in the blazing midday sun; the men haggard, 
dusty, breathing hard, straining on as they 
near the battle, heroic in their impetuous en- 
ergy. Fast, faster yet ! Their help is sorely 
needed, for never has the situation been so 
desperate. It is the most critical moment in 
the great battle which will decide the fate of 
France. They know it, they feel it, her brave 
soldier-sons, and for her sake they press on, 

6s 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

choking with dust and thirst, up the exhaust- 
ing hill, with quicker and yet quicker step. 

On every side the storm of battle rages; 
the bombardment grows more and more in- 
tense ; long lines of wounded go trailing down 
toward the village; the heavy ammunition 
caissons creak and clatter, as their horses, 
flogged into a fast trot, drag them, swaying 
and lumbering, up the steep track. 

The passing of that regiment, marching 
steadily to victory in the midst of the tumult 
and anguish, will always remain to me one 
of the most noble and inspiring memories of 
the war. 



66 



II 



THE FRENCH OFFENSIVE IN 
CHAMPAGNE 

(SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER, 1915) 

AT the crossways near the batteries one 
^ ^ has to leave the highroad which, at 
this point, is raked by German guns, and fol- 
low a rutty track that makes a long circuit 
through the fields. Near the crossways, at 

the A farm, the soldiers of the colonial 

corps, who have already spent one winter 
there and are cheerfully preparing to spend 
another, have built themselves the queerest 
and most exotic of villages — a real Sudanese 
settlement of conical-roofed huts, shaped like 
a Mandarin's hat. In the middle of the vil- 
lage is a tiny wooden church, with a belfry 
that does its best to taper up into a spire. 
A soldier-priest says mass there every Sun- 

67 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

day. He and the altar take up nearly the 
whole of the space inside the church, while 
the faithful gather outside, piously following 
the service. On the fagade is a Latin in- 
scription: 

Regin^ Victoria 

PiLOSI MiLITES ^DIFICARUNT HaNC 
ECCLESIAM 

**To the Queen of Victory the Poilus {Pilosi Mili- 
tes) have erected this chiirch." (The ** Poilus'* 
have not all forgotten their humanities !) 

Just beyond there rises a steep slope bris- 
tling with batteries; on its crest are the artil- 
lery observation-posts. They are admirably 
fitted up and protected by thick courses of 
logs and beaten earth. A general is there, 
attentively examining with his field-glass the 
opposite slope, the greater part of which is 
in German hands. The general is one of 
the youngest chiefs of the French army. 
When hostilities broke out he was a colonel 
commanding a brigade; now, after just 
twelve months of war, he stands on one of 

68 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

the highest rungs of the ladder. He is tall, 
slim, young-looking, with an air of extreme 
distinction, quick, incisive speech, and reso- 
lute blue eyes. Whenever those eyes of his 
light on a new face he feels the immediate 
need to label and classify it and store away 
the image in some pigeonhole of his marvel- 
lously lucid memory, where thereafter it will 
always have its distinctive place. Looking 
at him and listening to him, one has the im- 
pression that the art of warfare is above all 
things a matter of precision, foresight, and 
tenacity. The masters of military science, 
the men predestined to shine in war, are those 
in whom the balance between brain and char- 
acter, between understanding and willing, is 
most perfectly adjusted. 

General Petain, having finished his minute 
inspection of the enemy's lines, emerges from 
the obscurity of the observation-post and de- 
scends by zigzagging communication trenches 
to the motor awaiting him at the foot of the 
hill. When he drives off he leaves on all of 

69 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

us the impression that his visit portends 
some big event. 
We were in the first days of August, 1915 

— it was just a year since the war had be- 
gun. The great German scheme of taking 
Paris and subjugating France in a few months 

— or a few weeks — had utterly failed. The 
battle of the Mame had broken down the 
first German offensive; six weeks later the 
furious dash on Calais was no less effectually 
checked. As for the numerous local attacks 
in the Argonne, in the course of which thou- 
sands of men, the best perhaps of the Ger- 
man army, were recklessly sacrificed in the 
effort to enhance the military prestige of 
the Kronprinz — all these attacks were far 
too local and limited to produce any lasting 
result. 

Despairing of a decisive success on the 
Western front, the Germans last spring turned 
the weight of their forces on the Eastern 
lines. To help out the demoralized army 
of Austria-Hungary they began, first in Gali- 

70 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

cia and then in Poland, a vigorous offensive 
which made them masters of a considerable 
extent of territory. Their formidable heavy 
artillery and their almost inexhaustible re- 
serves of munitions gave them a rapid ascen- 
dency over the Russian army, which, at that 
time, lacked not only munitions but rifles. 
Russia made a magnificent defense; but in 
August, 1915, her armies were in a difficult 
position. The German hopes, which had 
ebbed during the previous winter, were once 
more at the flood. It was clearly our busi- 
ness, on the Western front, to draw off some 
of the army corps which were threatening to 
break through the lines of our Allies. 

The French offensive in Artois, made four 
months earlier, on a narrow front, had re- 
sulted brilliantly. It had confirmed the faith 
of France in the valor of her troops and in 
the vigor and intrepidity of their powers of 
attack; it had proved that, even after a 
winter of stagnation in the trenches, the 
French army had lost nothing of its dash. 

71 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

At the same time, the movement had shown 
that the German defenses, in spite of their 
perfection, can be successfully attacked and 
taken if only the attack is carefully enough 
studied and minutely enough prepared on 
the lines which previous experience has indi- 
cated. So much we knew last August; and 
the time seemed to have come to renew the 
assault of the previous spring on a larger 
scale and with more important forces. 

Those forces were now available. The ar- 
rival of large English reinforcements had al- 
lowed the English front to be lengthened and 
had thereby released a corresponding body 
of French troops. That it is always a deli- 
cate operation to substitute, along any part 
of the front, one body of troops for another, 
is a fact that must be obvious to the most 
superficial student of the art of war. The 
present war is one of scientific precision and 
complexity. The solidity of any portion of 
the front is insured only by a combination 
of precautions and previsions as intricate 

72 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

and smoothly running as the wheels of a 
complicated machine. If one of the wheels 
stops the whole machine is likely to break 
down. The artillery fire, for example, must 
be so accurately regulated that the shells 
fall with mathematical precision at the pre- 
determined point, without even a few yards' 
deviation. The attainment of such a result 
necessitates extraordinary exactitude of aim, 
observation-posts skilfully selected, and such 
perfect telephonic communication that, at a 
word of command, batteries several kilometres 
away can instantly and unerringly pour a 
hail of shell on any given point. 

The substitution of one army corps for 
another necessitates a change of artillery- 
men, telephonists, sappers and miners, and 
so on; and the exchange must be carried out 
without the least delay or the slightest break 
of continuity along the front. In the present 
instance the feat was accomplished with com- 
plete success. Everything had been so in- 
telligently prepared that when the English 

73 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

front was extended the change did not pro- 
duce the slightest fluctuation anywhere along 
the line. The fact augurs well for the fu- 
ture. 

Some of our army corps, which had taken 
part in the May offensive in Artois, had 
meanwhile had time to rest and reform. The 
attacking power of a body of troops is ex- 
actly analogous to the nerve-power of a 
man. When a man is young, active, and 
full of life, no matter how great his temporary 
exhaustion, a few days of rest and a few 
nights of sleep will put him on his feet again. 
The French army is in this happy prime of 
its recuperative powers. Such and such a 
regiment or division may return from a hard 
battle considerably depleted; but after a 
few weeks of rest in good quarters, where the 
men can eat, sleep, and wash, the troops will 
have recovered their original temper and be 
ready to meet a fresh onset. 

This surprising elasticity, this promptness 
in throwing off fatigue and suffering, is not 

74 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

only the dominant characteristic of the French 
soldier, but the fundamental quality of the 
whole race — the quality which again and 
again has shone out in its long history. 

Every preceding experience of the war had 
shown that an attack, to have any chance 
of success, must be backed by formidable 
artillery with an almost inexhaustible supply 
of ammunition. The time had come when 
this force of artillery was at our command, 
and this supply of ammunition in our re- 
serves. We were beginning to see the result 
of the prodigious industrial effort by which 
France, within the space of a few months, 
had mobilized the greater part of her fac- 
tories to the sole end of the intensive produc- 
tion of war material. At any moment we 
chose it was in our power to sweep the 
German lines with a deluge of shot and 
shell. 

The ground chosen for the attack, which 
extended from Auberive to a point east of 
Ville-sur-Tourbe, covers a length of about 

75 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

twenty-five kilometres, and is far from being" 
an undiversified surface. Looking from west 
to east, it presents the following features: 

(1) A glacis about eight kilometres wide, 
of which the gentle slopes are covered with 
scattered clumps of trees. The road from 
St.-Hilaire to St.-Souplet, passing by the 
Baraque de TEpine de Vedegrange, is nearly 
on the axis of this glacis. 

(2) The hollow at the bottom of which 
lies the village of Souain. The first line of 
German trenches followed the inner lip of 
this hollow. The road from Souain to Somme- 
Py makes, as it were, the diameter of the 
half-circle. The Navarin farm, three and a 
half kilometres north of Souain, is on the 
crest of the hills commanding the hollow. 

(3) North of Perthes comes a level stretch 
running between the wooded hills of the 
Trou-Bricot and the Butte-du-Mesnil, like a 
long corridor three kilometres wide, barred 
at intervals by lines of trenches and abutting 
on a series of heights, the so-called "buttes 

76 




7^^ 



m^. 






Mfe 












'-ei\-Donmois 

6ay<in f = 












-?^>i7^ 



■s^-.:: 









.-- £!derWacques«l 



Ifiie^ 



MAP SHOwmr, POSITION OF GERMAN TRENCHES AND THE PROGRESS OF THE FRENCH OFFENSR'E 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

de Souain," the "cotes"* 193 and 201, and 
the "butte de Tahure," crowned by the Ger- 
man second lines. 

(4) North of Mesnil is a very strong posi- 
tion, bastioned on the west by the twin 
heights of the Mamelle Nord and the Tra- 
peze, and on the east by the "butte'' of 
Mesnil. Between these two points the Ger- 
man trenches formed a powerful curtain, 
behind which a broken region of dense wood- 
land extends to Tahure. 

(5) North of Beausejour is a bare stretch 
of easy country sloping up gradually in the 
direction of Ripont to the farm of the Maisons 
de Champagne. 

(6) North of Massiges the powerfully forti- 
fied "cotes" 191 and 199, which look on the 
map like the pattern of a hand, form the 
eastern flank of the German defenses. From 
here the ground slopes away gently toward 
Ville-sur-Tourbe . 

♦The numbers of these "c6tes," or hills, indicate their al- 
titude in metres. 

77 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

The two chief positions of the German 
works lay from three to four kilometres apart. 
The deeper of the two was formed by three 
or four lines of trenches, separated from each 
other by barbed-wire entanglements and run- 
ning back to a depth of from four hundred to 
five hundred yards. The second position con- 
sisted of a single trench, reinforced here and 
there by a support trench. This portion of 
the line, and the barbed-wire entanglements 
preceding it, were built almost entirely on the 
reverse slope of the hill, so that it was ex- 
tremely difficult for our artillery to get the 
range. 

In addition to these main points of the 
line, admirably organized centres of resis- 
tance had been formed wherever the groimd 
permitted — so many little fortresses, nests 
of concealed mitrailleuses, to which the troops 
of defense had orders to cling to the last 
round of shell if the intervening trenches 
were overwhelmed. 

It is obvious that the attack of lines or- 

78 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

ganized on this scale could have nothing in 
common with the war of manoeuvre that 
preceded the battle of the Marne. This was 
a wholly different kind of conflict, a siege 
war with methods and regulations of its 
own. To form an idea of it one must turn 
to the record of the great sieges of history, 
and notably to that of Sebastopol. 

The first necessity for the attacking army 
was to know with the utmost accuracy the 
exact place of every German trench, the 
depth of the barbed-wire defenses, and the 
position of the machine guns and the batter- 
ies. Thanks to our many means of infor- 
mation, we were fully instructed on all these 
points. Every feature of the German posi- 
tions was marked on a map and known by 
its special designation. The attacking troops 
knew exactly what was ahead of them and 
where they were going. 

The arrival of the troops had begun well 
in advance of the attack. Along the rail- 

79 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

ways and on the highroads there had been 
for days an uninteniipted stream of trains 
and motor-tmcks. The region about Chalons 
was swai'ming witli soldiers. 

The landscape of mid-Champagne, the 
"Champagne pouilleuse/' where so often 
in past times the destinies of France have 
been fought out, is monotonous, but not 
\nthout beauty. It is a region of untilled 
fields, of scattered pine forests, heatlis, and 
ponds, traversed by beautiful straight roads 
which seem puiposely to avoid the few and 
\\idely separated \illages. In these latter 
the half-timbered houses are all of tlie same 
t}i)e, and mostly several centuries old. They 
were so much fuel for the Kaiser's bonfires, 
and it did not take many of his incendiaiy 
tablets to set them ablaze. 

Pi'eparations were going rapidly forward; 
tlie sense of momentous things was in the 
ail'. Day by day, as the decisive hour drew 
nearer, the gi*eat army massed for tlie at- 
tack felt its ardor and impatience grow. 

80 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

The generals and the commanding officers 
exhorted their men; but words were un- 
necessary. Never had the tone of the French 
troops been finer; never had France pos- 
sessed a more magnificent army than that 
gathered last autumn on the plains of Cham- 
pagne. It was my good fortune to assist at 
several of the rounds of inspection, during 
which our most brilliant general, gathering 
about him his officers and men, set forth in 
a few words the effort and the self-sacrifice 
that their country required of them; and 
on every sternly set face the same look of 
heroic abnegation, the same resolve to strike 
hard and conquer, made mute response to 
his appeal. 

The artillery preparations had begun three 
days earlier, on the 22d of September. The 
fire was kept up night and day, with a pre- 
determined rhythm and according to a care- 
fully regulated plan. The objects to be at- 
tained were the following: the destruction 
of the wire entanglements, the burying of 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

the defending line in their underground shel- 
ters, the wrecking of the trenches and the 
parapets, and the cutting off of the com- 
munication trenches. 

The fire raked not only the first-line trenches 
but the support trenches and even the sec- 
ond-line positions. At the same time the 
long-range guns were bombarding the various 
headquarters, the encampments, and the 
railway-stations, cutting off the railway com- 
munication and interrupting the bringing up 
of supplies. 

From a height above Massiges I looked on 
for hours at this bombardment. Never have 
I seen one approaching it in violence. The 
shells burst so close to each other that the 
puffs of white smoke along the heights were 
merged in a single cloud. It was like look- 
ing at a multitude of geysers in full ebulli- 
tion. The air was shaken by an uninter- 
rupted roar, against which, now and then, 
a huge detonation would detach itself with 
a crash that seemed to shake the earth: it 

82 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

was the explosion of a heavy projectile from 
one of the big guns. 

It was not the first bombardment I have 
followed. During the Russo-Japanese War, 
on the second day of the battle of Liaoyang, 
I saw the whole Japanese artillery concen- 
trate its fire on the peak of Shoshan a few 
hours before the infantry assault. On the 
last day of the battle of the Mame, from 
the heights opposite Mondement, all the 
batteries of our division sent an infernal 
blast of shell against the summit crowned 
by the chateau, which was held by the Prus- 
sians. But these bombardments were as 
nothing compared to the present attack. 
The dazed and distracted German troops 
completely lost their heads. Every few mo- 
ments they sent up star shells as a signal 
to their artillery to open a curtain fire 
against the French. The unfinished let- 
ters found on many of the prisoners taken 
after the attack show the prodigious effect 
of this deluge of steel. A German soldier 

83 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

Avrites, on September 25tli: "I have received 
no news from home, and sliall probably re- 
ceive none for several days. The postal 
service has stopped; the whole line has been 
so violently bombarded that no human being 
could hold out. The railway is so contin- 
uously shelled that all trains have ceased 
lomning. We have been in tlie jfighting line 
for three da>'s. During these tliree days 
tlie French have shelled us so incessantly 
that our trenches ai*e completely wiped out.'* 
Another wrote on tlie 24th: "For the last 
two days the French have been bombarding 
us lilce madmen. To-day one of our shelters 
was demolished. There were sixteen men 
in it, and eveiy one of them was killed. 
IMany others were killed besides, and masses 
of men were wounded. The artillery fii*e is 
almost as rapid as that of tlie infantry. The 
whole front is covered by a cloud of smoke 
W'hicli hides eveiything. The men ai'e drop- 
ping like flies. The trenches are a heap of 
wreckage.'' 

84 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

Still another, writing on the same day, 
says: '*A rain of shell is falling on us. Our 
kitchen and provisions are cannonaded all 
night. The field-kitchens no longer arrive. 
Oh, if only the end were in sight ! Peace ! 
peace! is the cry on every man's lips." 

An artilleryman of the 100th Regiment of 
field-artillery writes on September 25th: 

"We have been through awful hours. It 
seemed as if the whole world were crum- 
bling away. We have had heavy losses. Last 
night one company of two hundred and fifty 
men had sixty killed. A neighboring battery 
lost sixteen. 

**The following instance will show you the 
frightful power of the French projectiles. 
A shelter five metres below ground, roofed 
with two layers of logs and two and a half 
metres of earth, was smashed like a match.'' 

The captain commanding the third com- 
pany of the 135th Regiment of German re- 
serves writes in his report: "Send us a supply 
of rations at once. We have received no 

8s 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

provisions to-day. We are in urgent need 
of flares and hand-gi'enades. Is the sani- 
tary column never coming to look after our 
wounded?" And a few hours later: ** I in- 
sist on immediate reinforcements. My men 
are dying of fatigue and want of sleep. I 
have no news of the battalion." 

The artillery preparation was at the highest 
pitch of efficiency. We had done all that it 
was in our power to do. There remained 
one important factor of success; but that, 
alas ! w^as an incalculable one. No one could 
foresee the weather, and much depended on 
our having a fine day for the attack. Clear 
weather would give us an immense advan- 
tage by facilitating that co-ordination of ac- 
tion between the infantry and the supporting 
artillery on which success in the offensive so 
largely hangs. Once the attacking columns 
were thrown into the furnace, it was vitally 
necessary for the staff and the artillery to 
keep in constant touch witli them, to Imow 

86 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

exactly how far they had advanced, and to 
be able at each step to support and direct 
them. 

The assault on the second-line positions 
also depended for its success on a clear at- 
mosphere; for this second position, usually 
placed on the reverse slopes of hilly ground, 
is so extremely difficult to discover that its 
wire defenses can be only partially destroyed 
by the artillery. 

During the days preceding the general 
attack the sky, which had hitherto been ra- 
diant, began to grow cloudy. Toward night- 
fall on the 24th the clouds melted away be- 
fore a moon that seemed to promise a return 
of fine weather, a promise which the next 
morning unhappily belied. By daybreak a 
fog had closed down on the lines and a thick 
drizzle was beginning to fall. 

But no atmospheric conditions could damp 
the feverish impetuosity of our troops. The 
moment for the general attack was set for a 
quarter past nine. During the night all the 

87 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

attacking troops had taken up their positions. 
The soldiers lined all the parallel trenches, 
and the trenches of communication by which 
the supporting column was to be brought 
up. Every officer had set his watch by the 
time of the general headquarters. 

One must have lived through such mo- 
ments to realize their tragic and passionate 
beauty. Hundreds and thousands of men in 
the vigor of their youth are massed there to- 
gether awaiting the shock. Many of them 
— and they all know it — are inexorably 
marked for death. All of them feel the great 
shadow groping for them, invisible yet ever 
present in their ranks; but its nearness, far 
from weakening their courage, touches their 
resolve with a stem and manly gravity. 

By seven in the morning I was at a com- 
mander's station from which part of the battle- 
field was visible. Our artillery fire still went 
on, ever intenser and more furious, as though 
seeking, during the minutes that remained, 
to crush and submerge such portions of the 

8S 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

German lines as had escaped our heavy guns. 
It was obvious that, after three days of such 
uninterrupted bombardment, the Germans 
must know that the decisive hour was at 
hand. Every few seconds flares rushed up 
from their lines, imploring the curtain fire 
that was to stop our infantry. 

Suddenly, at the preordained moment, the 
French, headed by their officers, revolver in 
hand, flung themselves out of the trenches 
along the whole of the immense line. In 
order to maintain the necessary discipline 
and self-control of the troops under the 
deadly fire that awaited them, each section 
was marshalled into line as soon as it reached 
open ground. Then, at double-quick so that 
they should not lose their wind by too im- 
petuous a dash forward, they broke in a 
first immense wave against the German 
trenches. Hardly had one wave of infantry 
swept forward when another surged up be- 
hind it and flowed impetuously in the same 
direction. The advance was like that of a 

89 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

mighty sea whose irresistible breakers must 
undermine the rockiest coast. 

The speed of the French advance was so 
great that the Germans were almost every- 
where taken by surprise. All their first-line 
trenches were submerged. The troops who 
occupied them were all killed or gave them- 
selves up; and the infantry swept on to the 
second line. On the way it captured a large 
number of German cannon, machine guns, 
and heavy pieces; the artillerymen fell where 
they stood. Wherever a German defensive 
work was too solidly organized to be taken 
with a rush, it was invested by our troops; 
and the enemy, thus encircled, surrendered 
in thousands. At certain points of the front 
our infantry poured ahead with such im- 
petuosity that the artillery, to support it, 
had to limber their guns and move them 
forward, exactly as in open battle. There 
could be no more amazing proof of the vigor 
and vehemence of the French attack. 

Unhappily, it was not to be hoped that 

90 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

the forward movement should everywhere 
strike the same pace. Irregularity of ad- 
vance is one of the inevitable conditions of 
siege war. The lines of least resistance are 
bound to be carried with relative speed; 
while at points where the difficulty of the 
ground or the greater courage of the de- 
fenders makes the advance harder, progress 
necessarily slackens. Therefore, a few hours 
after the first assault, the line attacked, in- 
stead of being straight, has been bent into 
a series of perilous zigzags. 

Nevertheless, after two or three days of 
fierce fighting, the French troops had achieved 
important results. To form an idea of what 
had been gained, it is necessary to consider 
separately each of the sectors of the front; 
for in each one the struggle assumed a dif- 
ferent form and had a different outcome. 

In the region to the right of the Epine 
de Vedegrange the advance of our troops 
was very rapid. At this point there was an 
extremely strong German centre of resistance, 

91 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

composed of a triple and a quadruple line 
of trenches, machine-gun blockhouses, and 
a bit of woodland covered with one of the 
most intricate systems of defense along the 
German front and giving shelter to numerous 
concealed batteries. But the whole of this 
sector was taken by a sudden and irresistible 
dash. In spite of heavy losses, in spite of the 
fatigue of incessant fighting, the French 
swept on and on, leaving behind them only 
enough men to scour the conquered region 
and break down its centres of resistance. 
On the 27th of September, toward evening, 
our troops were in touch with the German 
second line; at two points we had even got 
a footing in them, making a breach of about 
five hundred yards. Unluckily, it was im- 
possible to widen this breach sufficiently to 
reap the reward of our success. German 
heavy batteries concentrated their strength 
on the opening, and hidden machine guns 
swept its sides with a fierce enfilading fire. 
Nevertheless, the results achieved in this 

92 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

sector figure up as follows: the taking of 
fifteen square kilometres of ground riddled 
with trenches and fortified works, of forty-four 
pieces, seven of 105 mm. and six of 150 mm., 
and of more than three thousand prisoners. 

In the Souain sector the enemy line swept 
a great curve about the village. At certain 
points the German trenches were over a 
kilometre from ours. It therefore became 
necessary, when the offensive was planned, 
to push our works far enough forward to 
facilitate the attack on the German front. 
This subterranean engineering was carried 
out with incomparable pluck and energy. 
Leaving the trenches at night, our soldiers 
literally bounded across the intervening space. 
When they reached the designated point they 
dug themselves in, afterward linking their 
new line to the trenches they had left by 
communication trenches. This exceedingly 
difficult exploit was actually accomplished 
under the eyes and under the fire of the 
enemy, and the parallel trenches followed the 

93 



GENER.\L JOFFRE 

cunT of the Gimiiaii lino at a distance of 
loss than two hundrod yards. 

Tho attack lx\can simultaneously at three 
points. To tlie west we advanced toward 
the wcxxied i^round: in the centre we fol- 
lowed the line of the road from S<.niain to 
Somme-P>% in the dkection of the Navarin 
fami; to the east we bent toward the wcxxis 
which are intersected by the road from Souain 
to Tahure. and toward tlie **buttes" of Sou- 
ain. Oiu* advance was extremely rapid. To 
the left we covered two kilometres in less 
than an hour; in the centre, three kilometres 
in forty-five minutes. By ten o'clock we 
were abreast of the Navarin fanii, and a 
glance at the map \^'ill show the amazing 
rate of our progress. 

Toward the east it was harder to make 
headway. The Sabot wood was full of Ger- 
man machine-gims. which greatly facilitated 
the enemy's resistance. But this centre of 
defense was suiTOunded and taken, enabling 
our troops to close up wiUi tliose which were 

94 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

attacking to the north of Perthes. The Ger- 
mans were completely encircled, and, leav- 
ing only a sufficient force to reduce the posi- 
tion, the main part of our troops pushed on. 

Those left behind sent parlementaire's to 
demand the surrender of the Germans. They 
were met by rifle fire, upon which they at- 
tacked the defenders with the bayonet. The 
survivors surrendered and were sent to the 
rear, and a number of batteries and a large 
amount of material remained in our hands. 
By the 28th we were in contact with the 
second German line. Our troops had been 
magnificent, and they had been led by gen- 
erals and officers whose courage and disre- 
gard of self may be measured by the fact that 
one general of division and four colonels had 
already been wounded, and two colonels 
killed. 

Between Souain and Perthes lies a wooded 
region where violent fighting had already 
taken place in the previous February. We 
had then carried a part of the German 

95 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

trenches, and the enemy, aware that the 
point was a vital one, had provided it with 
powerful defenses. First came an almost 
triangular salient, which was very strongly 
held — we called it the Pocket. Beyond, 
the fonnidably organized defenses of the 
Trou-Bricot wood presented an almost in- 
surmountable obstacle. This bit of country, 
pocketed by craters and seamed and cross- 
seamed with trenches and communication 
trenches was nearly impregnable; yet it 
failed to check the impetus of our troops. 

The way in which the Pocket and the 
Trou-Bricot were carried may be regarded 
as a model of tliat particular type of war- 
fare. The plan of attack, marvellously con- 
ceived, was yet more marvellously executed. 
The first thing to be done was to take the 
Pocket. At the appointed hour our batteries 
progressively lengthened their range, while 
the infantry dashed forward. The attack 
was carried out in perfect order, and half 
an hoiu* later, at a quarter before ten, the two 

96 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

columns which had stormed the extremities of 
the salient were in contact. The work was 
surrounded and the surviving defenders sur- 
rendered. At the same time a battalion got 
a footing on the southern edge of the wood of 
the Trou-Bricot. The succeeding battalions, 
skirting its eastern edge, executed a perfect 
left turning movement and formed in echelon 
along the communication trenches. Mean- 
while, to the north of Perthes our troops had 
pierced the three lines of German trenches 
and, covered by our artillery, were sweeping 
on to the ** York ' ' trench. They took it almost 
without striking a blow. Farther to the east, 
along the road from Perthes to Tahure, 
greater difficulties were encountered. A Ger- 
man mitrailleuse in a shelter kept up a trouble- 
some fire; but finally one of our infantry 
officers, with a sergeant, succeeded in bring- 
ing up a gun to within a little over three hun- 
dred yards of the mitrailleuse and promptly 
smashed it. 
Toward the end of the afternoon one of 

97 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

our regiments had reached the road leading 
from Souain to Tahure. The Trou-Bricot 
wood was thus almost completely encircled, 
and our soldiers dashed into the German 
encampment from all sides and swept it 
clear of its defenders. The surprise was 
complete. Some of the German oflficers 
were taken in bed; this fact, which is ab- 
solutely established, testifies to the amazing 
rapidity of the attack. It shows also the 
confidence of the Germans in the secu- 
rity of their position. They were certainly 
justified in thinking the Trou-Bricot secure 
from attack. They had spent the whole 
winter and spring in perfecting its defenses, 
and had fitted up luxurious quarters for 
themselves in their impregnable fortress. The 
houses of the adjacent villages and all the 
chateaux in the neighborhood had been me- 
thodically pillaged. The German officers had 
transported to the subterranean apartments 
of the Trou-Bricot chairs, sofas, beds, ward- 
robes, and even pianos. On one of these 

98 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

officers was found an extremely curious order 
from a German quartermaster-general, for- 
bidding the occupants of the houses and 
chateaux of the neighborhood to take the 
furniture with them when they left. "Such 
things can no longer be permitted/' the order 
gravely ran, "because, if the first occupants 
carry away everything they take a fancy to, 
nothing will be left for those who come after 
them." 

The surrounding of the Trou-Bricot was 
one of the most successful manoeuvres of our 
offensive. Throughout all this region the 
majority of the German batteries were sur- 
prised and taken in the height of the action, 
and the gimners and loaders killed before 
they knew what was happening. One of 
our regiments advanced four kilometres in 
two hours, taking on the way ten guns, three 
of 105 mm. and seven of 77 mm. 

Unhappily, after midday our rate of prog- 
ress began to slacken. The thick weather 
made it impossible for our artillery to follow 

99 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

the advance and it became increasingly dif- 
ficult to establish liaisons. From the " buttes ' ' 
of Souain and Tahure the enemy poured a 
converging fire on our troops, who were ad- 
vancing over open ground. Nevertheless, 
they pushed forward to the foot of the hill 
of Tahure, where they dug themselves in. 
But the wire entanglements protecting the 
second German position were still intact, and 
a fresh bombardment would have been re- 
quired to carry it. 

It was to the north of Mesnil that the 
German resistance was most dogged. Our 
attack made us masters of a hollow called 
the ravine of Cuisines; but it was impossi- 
ble for us to get beyond this point. 

To the north of Beausejour, however, we 
scored a swift and brilliant success. The 
successive waves of the attacking force, fling- 
ing themselves on the first lines, completely 
submerged them. The onrush carried some 
of the troops straight to the crest of Maisons 
de Champagne; on the way they passed 

lOO 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

through several batteries, killing the gunners 
at their posts. It was in this sector that the 
cavalry lent an unexpected support to the 
infantry. Two squadrons of hussars, in 
spite of a violent curtain fire, had swept past 
our trenches and were galloping toward the 
German batteries to the north of Maisons 
de Champagne. On the way they reached a 
trench in which the Germans had managed 
to maintain themselves. The German ma- 
chine-guns were instantly turned on the 
hussars and a few horses fell. The hussars 
immediately sprang to the ground and rushed 
at the trenches with drawn swords, giving 
the infantry time to rally under cover of 
this diversion. The resistance of the enemy 
was broken and six hundred prisoners were 
taken at this particular point. 

The heights of Massiges had also been 
converted into what the Germans regarded 
as an impregnable fortress, from the summit 
of which they commanded all our principal 
positions. But in a quarter of an hour our 

lOI 



GENERiVL JOFFRE 

infantiy had scaled the height and wore iii 
pc>ssession of the C^ninan works. There fol- 
lowed a teiTilie hand-grenade light in tlio com- 
nuniieation trenches. As onr bomb-throwers 
advanced the Cornians snrrendered in masses. 
An nninlermpted chain of boiub-throwei*s, 
like the chain of buckets at a fire, occupied the 
irenches and the ridges of tlie hill. For more 
than eight days the tight went on witliout 
respite, and with unexampled fury. The 
Germiuis brought up continual reinforce- 
ments. All tlieir available troops were called 
up to defend the hill of Massiges, which they 
were resolved to hold at all costs. The Ger- 
man gunnel's dropped beside their guns, the 
grenadiei-s on.tlieir gxenade-boxes. And still 
our tixxps continued slowly but steadily 
to advance, till tinally w\^ obtained posses- 
sion of the w'hole crest of IMassiges, main- 
taining oui-selves there in spite of the furious 
counter-attacks of the enemy. The Gennan 
General Staff appears to have been especially 
affected by the loss of tliis position. Ac- 

I02 



^-^^M 



uasi 



rtali. 



^rf, 



■--'>»/;j 



S 



.>'/- 



\^- 



virtj 



,/< 



^0 



B'j> 



fjr.(^, 



'(li 



'A 



^"^^Oi 



: FOR'FFfrrA'l |fj,\s ANI. 




MAP SHOWING THE FORMIDABLE SERIES OF GERMAN FORTIFICATIONS AND TRENCHES KNOWN AS "THE HAND OF MASStGES.' 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

cording to the German communiques, it was 
voluntarily evacuated because our artillery 
fire had made it untenable. But whenever 
the Germans lose a position they profess to 
have abandoned it of their own accord; after 
the battle of the Marne they went so far as 
to describe their retreat of sixty kilometres 
as a strategic manoeuvre. As a matter of 
fact, the heights of Massiges were won from 
the enemy bit by bit, yard by yard, by the 
dauntless courage of our bomb-throwers. 

Our huge attack along a front of twenty- 
five kilometres was supported by two others 
designed to cover our flanks. The task of 
the troops to whom this duty was allotted, 
and especially of those operating on the 
western borders of the Argonne, between 
Servon and the wood of La Grurie, was 
peculiarly difficult. It was their duty to 
hold in check and to immobilize as large a 
force of the enemy as possible, and they ful- 
filled their mission brilliantly and with un- 
faltering bravery. 

103 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

Our offensive in Champagne is universally 
acknowledged to have been a great tactical 
success. Along the whole front the first 
line of German works, three or four lines of 
trenches, the strongest centres of defense, 
the points of support, and the field-works 
were all carried. At certain points our troops 
even succeeded in making a breach in the 
second line. If these breaches were not 
wide enough to permit our supporting troops 
to pour through them, it was chiefly because 
the persistent bad weather made it impos- 
sible to follow up our advantage. 

In spite of this, the results obtained, ma- 
terially as well as morally, were extremely 
satisfactory. 

In the first place, our tactical success had 
an immediate strategical result of the first 
importance. The Germans, roused to the 
great risk they had run, recalled in hot haste 
ten or twelve of their divisions operating on 
the Russian front: that is to say, a body 
of troops large enough to have permitted 

104 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

them to press their advance into Russian 
territory and perhaps obtain a decisive ad- 
vantage over our allies. The fact is indis- 
putable, and it would be hard to exaggerate 
its importance. The check of the German 
offensive in Russia coincided exactly with 
our victory in Champagne, and the link be- 
tween the two events is very close. 

For several days the Germans were in a 
state of great alarm. They understood that 
their front had very nearly been broken 
through. The hurried orders of their Gen- 
eral Staff, the agitation of their troops, re- 
vealed their anxiety and apprehension. 

Our advance made us master of about 
forty square kilometres of ground, and left 
in our hands an enormous number of pris- 
oners — twenty-five thousand men, three 
hundred and fifty officers, one hundred and 
fifty guns, besides machine guns, bomb- 
throwers, and a large amount of other booty. 
Such figures are the trophies of an important 
victory. To measure their significance it is 

105 



GENKRAL JOFFRE 

only necessary to compare them with those of 
some of the memorable battles which French 
soldiei*s have fought and won in the past. 

At Jena, for instance, we tcx^k fifteen thou- 
sand prisonei-s at\d two hundred c^uns. The 
Pi'ussian lapses on that cx'casion amounted to 
eighteen thousand men. 

At Austerlitz we took twelve thousand 
prisonei'S and one hundred and eighty-six 
gims, while tlie imp<.n'ial army lost twenty-five 
thousand men. 

For the first time since the bc^ginning of 
the present war the German troops in Cham- 
pagne suiTendered (7/ /}iiissc. Whole regi- 
ments tlius dis:ippeared completely from tlie 
German amiy; and for da>'s and days, along 
the great highwa>' that nms through Chalons, 
an uninternipted stream of Gennan prisoner 
poured in from the front. 

The lettei-s and journals found on these 
prisoners and taken from the dead lx\u* wit- 
ness to the extreme discouragement of the 
enemy. On Uie 30th of September a lieu- 

lOO 



TUK CriAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

tenant of reserves of the Tenth Army Corps 
jotted down the following lines: 

Yesterday sixteen of my men were killed 
by torpedrxis. It is frightful. If only the 
rain would begin again, or the fog come 
back! But with this weather the aviators 
are sure to be on us again, and we shall be 
deluged with torpedrx^s and with shells from 
the trenches. Clear skies, how I hate you! 
Fog, fog, come back to help us ! 

The German losses were extremely heavy 
— it is not impossible to compute them ap- 
proximately. At the beginning of September 
the Germans had seventy battalions on the 
Champagne front. Before the 25th of the 
month, in anticipation of our attack, they 
brought twenty-nine more battalions to this 
front, forming a total of ninety-nine; and the 
one hundred and fifteen thousand men com- 
posing this force were immediately thrown 
into action. 

During the first days of the battle the 

107 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

wastage on the German side was so great 
that the General Staff was obliged to renew 
its forces by despatching to the front ninety- 
three new battalions. In the greater number 
of regiments the losses were certainly not 
lower than fifty per cent. Therefore it may 
be safely assumed that the total of German 
losses in Champagne amounted to one hun- 
dred and forty thousand men. 

The importance which General Joftre at- 
tached to this victor}^ is shown by the fol- 
lowing Order of the Day, which he addressed 
to the army: 

General Headqu.\rters, October 3d. 

The commander-in-chief desii'es to trans- 
mit to the troops under his command the 
expression of his profound satisfaction re- 
garding the results obtained by the attacks 
up to the present time. 

Twenty-five thousand prisoners, three hun- 
dred and fifty officers, one hundred and fifty 
gims, and materiel which it has not yet been 
possible to count: such are the results of a 

loS 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

victory of which the fame has rung through 
Europe. 

None of the sacrifices entailed have been 
vain. All who were engaged have done their 
part. Our present success is the surest pledge 
of future victory. 

The commander-in-chief is proud to have 
under his command the finest troops that 
France has ever known. 

J. JOFFRE. 

The most important result of our success 
in Champagne is that for the first time since 
the beginning of the war the Germans com- 
pletely lost their initiative, and even any 
serious ability to react against our attack. 
One of their generals, Von Ditfurth, acknowl- 
edges the fact explicitly in one of his orders. 

"I have the impression,'' he writes, "that 
our infantry is simply remaining on the de- 
fensive. ... I cannot protest too ener- 
getically against such a system, which neces- 
sarily results in deadening in our troops all 
spirit of aggression, leaving to the enemy com- 

109 



c;KM RAl. JOl I RK 

ploto freedom of action, and siibordinatmc: 
our own alliuuie lo his iniiiative." 

\'on PiiUirth wavS rii^ht. Tp to the date 
of the Chanipai^ne otYensive the dernians. 
whenever they Ux^t any pcxsition. however 
ins i>;nit leant, considered it a point oi iionor 
to retake what they had last at any east. 
Now for the tirst time, after this important 
victory, they seemed incapable of any serious 
counter-attack. 

They mereh attempted to ccather together 
as lari^e a force as they could muster - the 
rank and hie of the rei;iments all in inextri- 
cable confusion and to mass it on their 
s<.\'ond lines, whicii they felt to Ix^ giiively 
menaced. That was ilie limit oi tlieir elTort. 
No serious attempt was made to recover any 
of the advantai^es i^ained by the I'Vench. It 
is im|.x^ssible to lay tcx> much stress on this 
fact. 

In the coui*so of this tenable "match" we 
Stv one of two advers;iries recei\e a territic 
blow without tryini: to return it. There 

no 



THE CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE 

could te no better presage for the future. 
It is true that the blow received has not laid 
the adversary low; but no one in France 
ever imagined that Germany, which has de- 
voted half a century to the preparation of 
this war, lavishing upon the task all her 
wealth, her intelligence, her power of or- 
ganization, and also her ruthless savagery, 
could be disabled by one blow. The struggle 
now going on is a question of patience, of 
energy, and of endurance. Great results, 
as we know, are most often obtained little 
by little, and as the consequence of unin- 
terrupted effort. 

What has been accomplished in Cham- 
pagne by the heroism of our men and the 
intelligence of their chiefs is no small achieve- 
ment. History will in due time record the 
fact. 



Ill 



Ill 

TWO COLLABORATORS OF GENERAL 

JOFFRE 

General de Castelnau and General 

FOCH 
L GENER.VI. de CASTELNAU 

IN tlie early da>'s of September, 1914, and 
simultaneously with the battle of the 
Marne, the Gemians made a formidable at- 
tempt to get the better of our amiy in Lor- 
raine. They were detennined, at no matter 
what price, to seize Nancy. The Kaiser 
came in person to Dieuze. Near by, on the 
frontier, a glittering regiment of white cuiras- 
siers stood in readiness; he intended to place 
himself at their head and make Nancy the 
scene of one of those preannounced spectac- 
ular entries which, throughout this war, the 
god of battles has consistently denied him. 

112 



GENERALS DE CASTELNAU AND FOCH 

With Nancy as a centre, and taking a 
radius of twenty to twenty-five kilometres, 
an arc traced from the banks of the Moselle, 
near Pont-a-Mousson, to those of the Meurthe, 
near Dombasle, would correspond approxi- 
mately with the heights of the Grand-Cou- 
ronne. This is the name given to an almost 
unbroken line of considerable hills which 
form a huge half-circle round Nancy from 
the Meurthe to the Moselle. These heights 
command striking glimpses of distant land- 
scape. On a clear day the cathedral of 
Metz is clearly visible : so also is the Cote de 
Delme, which the Germans have strongly 
fortified and made into one of the important 
points of their lines of defense. At the foot 
of the hills meanders the Seille, a little tribu- 
tary of the Moselle. This stream forms the 
frontier. 

The Germans, impatient for a decision, 
threw themselves recklessly against the Grand- 
Couronne. Their attacks upon the hill of 
Ste.-Genevieve on the north and upon the 

113 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

Grand-Mont d'Amance at the centre were 
particularly violent. Entire battalions of 
men were sacrificed without a thought. In- 
deed, at that moment of the war this was 
the customary German method. Secure in 
the belief that the war would be a matter of 
weeks or, at most, of months, they felt no 
need to economize the lives of their soldiers. 
But, in spite of these unsparing efforts, the 
Grand-Couronne stood firm. The great Mont 
d'Amance alone received more than twenty 
thousand shells without material injury. The 
French troops holding the foot of the slopes 
had to defend the valley through which the 
main road to Nancy runs. The fate of the 
capital of Lorraine was in their hands. These 
troops were proof against every attack. They 
fought to the extreme limit of human en- 
durance. The Germans, exhausted and dis- 
heartened, were forced to let go their hold 
and beat a retreat. Nancy was saved. On 
the night before their departure the enemy 
attempted a cruel, cowardly, and typically 

114 



GENERALS DE CASTELNAU AND FOCH 

Teutonic revenge upon the city they had 
failed to seize. Some forty shells were dropped 
on Nancy from one of their long-distance 
batteries; but only the suburbs of the town 
were reached. 

The splendid resistance offered by the 
army of Lorraine contributed directly to 
the victory of the Mame, and enabled us 
to reap the full fruit of our success. Had 
the army of Lorraine been shaken, had 
Nancy fallen, the very pivot of all our forces 
might have been imperilled. 

In fact, the more one considers the battle 
of the Mame, the more clearly it shows itself 
as a gigantic unity, a perfectly contrived 
whole, where all the elements were dove- 
tailed into each other, without the smallest 
gap between, where each of the great actors 
called upon the stage fulfilled to the exact 
letter the part he had to play. 

The commander of the army of Lorraine 
and the soul of this magnificent resistance, 
was General de Castelnau, one of the close 

"S 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

collaborators of General Joffre. Hardly was 
the contest over and calm restored to this 
portion of the line when General de Castel- 
nau was suddenly sent to a new and hotly 
contested section of the battle-front. After 
the retreat of the Mame the first effort of 
the Gennans was a turning movement against 
our left wing. Molent engagemeiits took 
place in the neighborhood of Peronne and 
Amiens: each of the opposing armies tended 
to shift their forces from east to west. Here, 
as elsewhere, the German attacks came to 
the same result. They w^ere entirely re- 
pulsed. 

General de Castelnau, who had led a single 
army to the most brilliant success, and under 
conditions of the utmost difficulty, was pro- 
moted by General Joffre to the command 
of a group of armies. In this capacity he 
exercised the high control of our great of- 
fensive in Champagne in September, 1915. 
Here, once more, he added a new achieve- 
ment to his former successes. Not long after- 

ii6 



GENERALS DE CASTELNAU AND FOCH 

ward, when General Joffre was appointed 
commander-in-chief of all the armies of France, 
on the Balkan front as well as the French, 
General de Castelnau was made the chief of 
his General Staff. He thus finds himself the 
gemralissime' s right-hand man, sharing in 
every moment of his work. 

General de Castelnau was bom at St.- 
Affrique, in the Aveyron. Somewhat short 
in stature, but well-proportioned, thick-set, 
and solidly built, with a bronzed complexion, 
quick gestures, and a frank, alert expression, 
he is a vigorous offshoot of a race which unites 
southern vivacity with the sturdiness of a 
mountain stock: a race of hot blood and 
cold brain. The rough soil of the table-lands 
of Languedoc and Gascony has, in fact, 
produced a notable line of warriors. Typical 
of them is Montluc, a man with whom Gen- 
eral de Castelnau presents more than one 
point of likeness. Montluc, too, was hard: 
hard on others, but harder still on himself, 
ardent in the cause of his service, possessed 

117 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

of an unfailing imagination, a fluent and 
vivid gift of language, distinguished for his 
prowess in the field, and no less for his power 
to recount the story of that prowess to the 
delight of his contemporaries and of pos- 
terity. The "Commentaries'' of Montluc 
are certainly among the books to which, in 
the course of this war, many Frenchmen, 
and many who are not French, must most 
willingly have returned. It is good to repeat 
the proud and splendid words with which 
those "Commentaries" open: "As there 
are certain lands wherein some fruits do co- 
piously abound, that elsewhere rarely flourish, 
so also, in infinite number, does our Gas- 
cony customarily bear great and valiant cap- 
tains as a fruit proper and natural to itself." 
Languedoc's fruitfulness in military leaders 
was far from exhausting itself in Montluc. 
In the wars of the Empire alone, Murat, 
Bessieres, Marbot — all men of Gascon birth 
— stand in the very foreground of the pic- 
ture. 

ii8 



GENERALS DE CASTELNAU AND FOCH 

General de Castelnau's family had long 
been settled in the Rouergue, at the foot of 
the Gausses. His father, a lawyer of great 
ability, well-known and greatly esteemed in 
those parts, was for many years the mayor 
of St.-Affrique. He had three sons: the eld- 
est entered the Polytechnic School and is now 
a brilliant engineer; the second followed his 
father's profession and became deputy for 
the Aveyron; the third, who chose the pro- 
fession of arms, is Edouard de Castelnau, our 
general. He was bom in 1851 and is now 
sixty-five years of age. 

We have here a perfect type of an old 
French bourgeois family. In it, to the full, 
are seen the finest and strongest qualities of 
our race: its sense of duty, its love of indus- 
try, its spirit of sacrifice. General de Castel- 
nau is the father of ten children. Since the 
beginning of the war three have been killed — 
two in the earliest months of the fighting, 
the third at the time of the French offensive 
of September, 1915. In spite of these heavy 

119 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

losses, he has pursued his great task without 
allowing himself a single moment's distrac- 
tion from the great cause intmsted to him. 
Families like these — and they are more 
numerous than foreigners usually suppose — • 
form the backbone of our nation: it is they 
who have done most to save France. 

The foreigner, however intelligent and dis- 
cerning, has seldom any opportunity of be- 
coming acquainted with people of this type. 
It is not only the idle and unobserv^ant tourist 
who comes to spend a few weeks in Paris, 
treating it as the best watering-place in the 
world, and seeking, rigorously and exclu- 
sively, for just those distractions and those 
impressions which a watering-place can give, 
to whom families of this kind are unknown. 
Even those who come frequently to France, 
or establish themselves there, have the ut- 
most difficulty in obtaining a deeper insight 
into French life than Paris society gives. 
Paris society is in no sense t>Tpical of France; 
and in a great crisis, such as war, it is an- 

120 



GENERALS DE CASTELNAU AND FOCH 

other France that is suddenly disclosed — 
the true France, unknown and unsuspected. 
It is no wonder that many who have never 
known this France are amazed at the sudden 
revelation. 

Edouard de Castelnau began his educa- 
tion in the Jesuit college of his native town. 
At the age of eighteen he passed into the 
military school of St.-Cyr, where French 
cavalry and infantry officers receive their 
training. This was in 1869. A year later 
the Franco-German War broke out. The 
young men of St.-Cyr, whether of senior or 
junior standing, were immediately given com- 
missions as second lieutenants and distrib- 
uted among the regiments. Second Lieu- 
tenant de Castelnau served through the 
whole of this disastrous campaign. It was a 
terrible first experience of life, which could 
not but leave its impress on the minds of the 
young men who underwent it. 

In spite of all the deficiencies in our mili- 
tary preparations, our troops came, no less 

121 



CKNKRAL JOlFRi: 

llian ihwc or tour tiinos. within an inch 
nay. within a liair'v^ breadth of routini; tho 
CuMinan anniOvS. Tlien, as ahvays, the moral 
and mihtary c|uaUtios ot" the raeo were won- 
derful. It was the hii^her eoniniand whieh 
was inadequate. Ihider dilTerent leatlers 
this or that disastrous defeat would, without 
a doubt, have been ehani;ed into a brilliant 
vietory, and l^iissia would ultimately have 
been beaten. Unhappily, our leaders were 
what they were, and Germany eame out of 
the war a victorious and immensely ai;- 
i^randi.ed [xnver. 

Youni; de Castelnau, in the course of this 
campaii^n. was promoted, tirst to the rank 
oi lieutenant, and then io tliat oi captain. 
For him. as for all who ser\ed with him, 
there was only one task: to set about reor- 
i^ani.ane;: the military power which had been 
shattered in this disaster and to t;ive France 
an army. 

On this patriotic labor, this natuMial recon- 
stniction, all Castelnau's efforts were hence- 

laa 



c;i:m:kals dk casiklnau and ioch 

forth concenlraled. His military life had 
bcKun with an unsuccessful war with Ger- 
many; it is crowned by another C^erman war 
from which we have every assurance of com- 
ing out victorious. The interval between 
these two wars — a period of forty-four years 
of hard study and hard thinking — was de- 
voted by him, and by our other chiefs, to 
one single problem — that of fitting our 
army for a conflict which each one of them, 
in spite of all the illusions of pacifists and 
politicians, knew in his heart to be inevitable. 
Forty-four years concentrated upon a sin- 
gle purpose gives a wonderfully harmonious 
unity — tenor vit^je, the I^omans called it — 
to a human life. And a great and deeply 
satisfying reward for their efforts and their 
labors has come to the men who, like Joffre 
and Castelnau, have had but one thought 
all their lives — to prepare the army of 
France for victory. 

Castelnau mounted the successive grades 
of a military career and at each stage re- 

123 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

ceived the recognition due to him. He 
passed into the Ecole de Guerre, was pro- 
moted to a divisional staff, to the staff of an 
army corps, and thence to the Great General 
Staff, from time to time, at each of these 
stages, putting in his periods of command 
with the troops. 

It was in 1906 that he became general, and 
from that moment his rise was very rapid. 
When, in 1913, General Joffre was designated 
as conmiander-in-chief of the armies in the 
field in case of war, he lost no time in calling 
General de Castelnau to his side as chief 
of staff. The confidence which General Joffre 
reposes in him is unbounded. The two great 
chiefs have for long been accustomd to work 
together and with one accord, and in con- 
tinuous collaboration they studied one by 
one all the difficult problems of a future 
war. This collaboration, begun and con- 
tinued in times of peace, was to become closer 
still upon the field of battle, where it has 

124 



GENERALS DE CASTELNAU AND FOCH 

come to fruition. After eighteen months of 
war we find General de Castelnau acting as 
second to the generalissimey Hving and work- 
ing beside him, and placing his whole intel- 
ligence and his whole activity at the service 
of his great chief. 

II. GENERAL FOCH 

At the end of August, 1914, our great re- 
treat was in progress. It was the eve of the 
battle of the Mame. The Tenth Division 
was retreating from the northeast of Charle- 
ville, on the Belgian frontier, in the direction 
of Rethel and Rheims, covering the left 
wing of the fourth army. This retreat, 
however, did not prevent it from dealing 
some heavy thrusts at the enemy. On Au- 
gust 28th, near Signy-FAbbaye, it overthrew 
an entire corps of Saxons forming part of 
Von Hausen's army, and, in spite of a decided 
inferiority in numbers, won an incontestable 
victory in the field. Nevertheless, in obe- 
dience to general orders, it became necessary 

125 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

in the middle of the night to turn and con- 
tinue the retreat. But our soldiers retained 
a very clear consciousness of having just 
beaten the Germans; and, in spite of this 
backward movement, their tone and confi- 
dence were unimpaired. 

Some days later at Bertoncourt, near 
Rethel, they once more got the better of 
the German invader. Two battalions of 
colonial infantry stormed this village at the 
point of the bayonet. The Saxons who oc- 
cupied it had descended to the unspeakable 
foul play of hiding behind a screen of civilians, 
to shield themselves from the rifle-fire of our 
troops. This fact is attested in official docu- 
ments by a hundred depositions each more 
crushing than the last. 

On August 30th — it was a morning of 
dog-day heat — a general was walking to 
and fro in front of the Hotel de Ville in the 
market-place of Attigny on the Aisne, a small 
town a little above Rethel. His manner was 
abrupt and jerky; his air was anxious, his 

126 



GENERALS DE CASTELNAU AND FOCH 

expression grave. From time to time a staff- 
officer would arrive bringing him information 
and presenting him with reports. He would 
snatch each paper that was brought to him, 
cast a rapid eye over it, and resume his walk. 
A number of German prisoners were marched 
past, marshalled by our soldiers with fixed 
bayonets. They were a wretched band, 
bare-headed, dishevelled, panting, covered 
with dust and sweat. The general hardly 
turned his eyes in their direction. The road 
and the market-place were packed with an 
agitated throng. Batteries, munition sec- 
tions, endless convoys, succeeded one an- 
other without a pause. The neighboring 
guns grew louder and louder, as if the battle 
were drawing nearer. A regiment passed. One 
of the men noticed the general and nudged 
his companion: "Look at the boss," he said. 
"I shouldn't care to tackle him to-day." 

"The boss" {le patron) was General Foch. 
He had just assumed command of a new 
army, expressly created for his control. 

127 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

The placing of Foch's army in the centre 
of our line, and of Manoury's army near 
Paris, were two master-strokes of General 
Joffre, admirably carried out by his sub- 
ordinates — two strokes in which our whole 
victory on the Marne was already implied. 
The German menace in Belgium was be- 
coming every moment graver and more pro- 
nounced; our left army and the British force 
were giving way. A new and rapid distri- 
bution of our forces was imperative. Some 
of our army corps were therefore passed from 
east to west. In the Paris sector an army 
under the command of General Manoury 
was created behind the intrenched camp, 
ready at a given moment to hurl itself on 
Von Kluck and threaten to envelop his 
troops. Similarly, in the centre, between 
our fourth and fifth armies, a new army was 
formed and intrusted to General Foch, who, 
in Lorraine, had brilliantly distinguished him- 
self in command of one of our finest corps — 
the Twentieth, of Nancy. 

128 



GENERALS DE CASTELNAU AND FOCH 

Events were not slow in proving the wis- 
dom and insight of the measures taken by 
General Joffre in the full agitation of re- 
treat. A few days later the retreat was at 
an end and the battle of the Mame had be- 
gun. 

The Germans recognized the deadly threat 
upon their left, where Von Kluck, sharply 
attacked by Manoury, was compelled to 
expose himself to two fronts at a time. They 
attempted to get out of the danger by a 
vigorous offensive directed on our centre. 
The Prussian Guard, another of their crack 
corps, made a violent attack in the neighbor- 
hood of Fere-Champenoise and the marshes 
of St.-Gond. It was at this point that Gen- 
eral Foch was situated. So spirited was the 
onslaught of the Germans that they suc- 
ceeded in shaking part of Foch's troops. 
His entire right was driven back to the south 
of Fere-Champenoise. His army no longer 
lined up horizontally with our general front; 
it had become a vertical line, an elbow. 

129 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

Happily, the divisions on his left held firm. 
At Mondement, at the southern extremity of 
the marshes of St.-Gond, they clung to their 
positions and offered a dogged and heroic 
resistance. 

But, though the right of this army gave 
way, the general in command of it, Foch, did 
not bend for an instant. Energy, tenacity, 
resistance ai'e his conspicuous qualities. Vic- 
tory is above all things a question of will; 
and it was by sheer force of will that victory 
was destined to be wrested from the enemy's 
hands. The general communicated his con- 
fidence to all around him. The word of com- 
mand was to hold on; to hold on whatever 
happened and at whatever price. And this 
was not enough. He achieved far more: he 
attacked. He accomplished a tour de force, 
almost a miracle: with an army three- 
fourths defeated he passed to the offensive. 

A general who had been placed under 
Foch's command came to report that his 
men were tired out: his troops were at the 



GENERALS DE CASTELNAU AND FOCH 

end of their tether. The rebuff was sharp: 
"Tired out!*' replied the general. "So are 
the Germans. You are to attack.'' 

Yet there was a moment, during the last 
two days of the great battle, when General 
Foch's position was highly critical. One of 
his army corps and a reserve division were 
beaten back beyond Fere-Champenoise. On 
his left, which up to now had held firm, the 
Germans after a terrible attack succeeded in 
occupying the Chateau de Mondement. At 
nightfall, on the evening of the 8th, the great 
plain, seen from the height of the cliff of 
Broye, presented a prodigious spectacle — 
a veritable vision of the Apocalypse. Cloud 
upon cloud of gleaming red and bronze rolled 
over it; the last rays of the sun lit up the 
storms of dust raised by the guns and by the 
great host of horse and foot; the bursting 
shells flashed incessantly; and over the whole 
scene rose the flames of mighty conflagra- 
tions. The Germans had only to reach a 
little beyond Mondement to become imme- 

131 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

diate masters of the entire cliff, from the 
summit of which their heavy artillery could 
blast our forces in the plain unhindered and 
turn our retreat into a rout. General Foch 
demanded a final effort of heroism from his 
sorely tried army, and the army answered 
to his call. The Chateau of Mondement, 
which the Germans had just seized, was re- 
taken by our troops after three successive 
attacks. The last of these, more violent 
than the rest, was made at nightfall with 
the help of two guns daringly moved up to 
within four hundred yards in order to shell 
the defenders of the place. At the most 
critical moment of the conflict General Foch 
improvised and executed an amazingly skil- 
ful manoeuvre to which our final victory was 
due. The Germans had driven themselves 
into our army like a wedge; their front took 
the form of an elbow. General Foch was 
inspired to turn to our own advantage a 
position which appeared wholly favorable 
to the enemy. He slipped one of his divi- 

132 



GENERALS DE CASTELNAU AND FOCH 

sions abruptly from left to right, in such a 
way as to throw it suddenly upon the Ger- 
man flank. The movement took the enemy 
by surprise. On a smaller scale it was the 
same skilful manoeuvre as that by which 
General Joffre threw Manoury's army on 
the flank of Von Kluck. In each case the 
result was admirable. The two manoeuvres 
were the deciding cause of the German re- 
treat and won us the victory of the Mame. 

Every frontal attack which the Germans 
had attempted had completely failed. They 
were gravely menaced on their flank, their 
troops were totally exhausted, their muni- 
tions at an end. This was the situation 
which faced the German Ge\ieral Staff. They 
recognized that to go on was to run the risk 
of a complete disaster. The Kaiser in person 
signed with his own hand the memorable 
order to retreat. France and its capital 
were saved. 

To this brilliant end General Foch had 
largely contributed. General Joffre recog- 

^33 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

nized the fact a few days later, in the con- 
gratulations which his ordre du jour offered 
to his brilliant collaborator. 

Three weeks passed. The Germans, hav- 
ing failed to take Paris or destroy the French 
army, now tried to outflank us on their right. 
They pushed their forces farther and farther 
toward Amiens and Arras. But their stroke 
was parried; and they found us ready with 
an answer. Our army corps were moved 
from right to left and from east to west. 
These two strategic movements, or **oquades,** 
on the French and German sides developed 
parallel to one another. The Germans were 
as incapable here as they had been elsewhere 
of making the least advance or gain. The 
two armies extended their fronts more and 
more to the north. They climbed toward 
Lille and the Yser. This is the phase which 
has been called "the race for the sea.** And 
when at length the North Sea was reached 
at Nieuport the two adversaries must needs 
come to a halt. 

134 



GENERALS DE CASTELNAU AND FOCH 

Just before this the Germans, through 
their crushing superiority in heavy artil- 
lery, were enabled to seize Antwerp. The 
little Belgian army made a fortunate escape 
toward Ghent and Fumes. They were en- 
abled to do this by the heroic resistance of 
the French naval brigade under the com- 
mand of Admiral Ronarc'h, which, step by 
step, contested the enemy's advance. The 
English army began to move northward 
toward Ypres from the positions on the banks 
of the Aisne which it had occupied since the 
battle of the Mame. The Germans there- 
upon decided to make a terrific effort to 
overturn the English army, the Belgian army, 
and the French troops which lay between 
them. This was the signal for the battle 
of the Yser. 

The violence of that battle and the fury 
of the German assaults can never be de- 
scribed. The Kaiser, after failing to take 
Paris, must have his revenge, and the re- 
venge must be dazzling. He decided that 

135 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

at any cost Calais must be his. Now was 
the moment when all Germany abandoned it- 
self to a hatred of England that amounted 
to frenzy. Lissauer had just composed that 
amazing and monstrous song, destined surely 
to remain in human history as a typical ex- 
ample of the degree of aberration and criminal 
folly to which a self-infatuated people can 
attain. 

Those who ruled the counsels of Germany 
were convinced that if Calais could be reached 
their strength in submarines would enable 
them to establish a close blockade against 
England, isolate her, and hold her at their 
mercy. The Kaiser, wishing to inflame the 
fury of his troops and to obtain from them 
a superhuman effort of courage and energy 
came in person to take part in the attack 
which he believed would prove decisive. 
He established himself at Roulers; he passed 
his troops in review and exalted their enthu- 
siasm. The Germans, who desired to break 
through at whatever cost, attacked in great 

136 



GENERALS DE CASTELNAU AND FOCH 

masses, as though with the stroke of a club. 
On one day they threw no less than seven 
divisions, one upon the other, against the 
French and English lines. The English, 
left to themselves, must have bent before 
this terrific onslaught. It was absolutely 
necessary to support them. Some of our 
best army corps were abruptly taken from 
certain parts of our front, sent in rapid suc- 
cession by rail, and thrown upon the Yser. 
It was a human dike raised to stay the Ger- 
man inundation. 

These strategic movements, far superior 
in scale to anything imagined before the 
present war, were carried out with great 
rapidity and perfect order. Yet one need 
only cast an eye on the map to realize that 
this concentration of forces upon the Yser 
involved far greater difficulties on our side 
than on the enemy's. The front from the 
North Sea to the Vosges makes almost a 
right angle, running north and south to 
Compiegne, and afterward east and west. 

137 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

The Germans are within the angle; we out- 
side it. It follows that they are more readily 
able than ourselves to send rapid reinforce- 
ments to one or other of their wings. 

In the first days of October General Foch, 
who directed his army in the centre of the 
general line, had been transferred to our 
left wing and given a far more important 
command. All our armies of the north were 
placed at his orders. He had, moreover, 
the delicate task of achieving a complete 
unity and co-ordination of effort with the 
English and Belgian armies. He was, in 
short, the commander-in-chief of all the 
troops which resisted the German onslaught 
on the Yser: a heavy task which was once 
again to yield him a brilliant success. 

The battle opened. The Germans called 
up continual reserves and forced the pace 
of their attack. But General Foch's con- 
fidence remained unbroken : it communicated 
itself to all who came near him. As each 
battalion arrived it was thrown into the 

138 



GENERALS DE CASTELNAU AND FOCH 

furnace. Not a day, not an hour, could be 
lost. Every gap had to be filled, and rein- 
forcements flung incessantly to strengthen 
our tottering line. 

The whole flat region between the Yser 
and the sea is typical of the Low Countries: 
water, water encroaching and submerging, is 
everywhere. Scratch the soil and water ap- 
pears. It is a fat and fertile country, sat- 
urated and oozing with humidity, blankly 
monotonous to look upon. Before the war 
a dense population crowded this rich land of 
Flanders. How much more crowded was it 
then, when through every village and hamlet 
the stream of Belgian refugees had over- 
flowed in thousands! And where should 
room be found for all these army corps of 
French soldiers arriving one after the other, 
ceaselessly? It was lucky that these men 
and their officers were the easiest and most 
good-natured in the world. And, after all, 
the human race is capable of infinite com- 
pression. 

139 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

Our troops did not limit themselves to 
the defensive. From time to time they 
passed to the counter-attack with great 
spirit. They attempted to seize the Cha- 
teau of Dixmude in order to gain the bridge- 
head which we hold at that point. It was a 
dark and gloomy winter's day, such as is 
frequent in that region, with a thick mist 
and a depressing, sooty sky. Quite near us 
this foggy atmosphere was cleft by the forked 
fire of bursting shells, for here at the bridge 
of Dixmude the Germans were scarcely a 
thousand yards away. 

From Nieuport to Thann, from the North 
Sea to the Vosges, many cities have been 
destroyed in the course of this war. But 
Dixmude endured the heaviest bombard- 
ment that a town can suffer. There is not 
a house unstruck, not a road that has not 
been pitted by shells. And what pits they 
are! One of them measured eight yards in 
diameter, and three and a half yards in depth. 
A carriage and horses, a whole section of 

140 



GENERALS DE CASTELNAU AND FOCH 

infantry, could be hidden in it. Indescrib- 
ably melancholy, in the dismal winter twi- 
light, are the roads and squares of the little 
town where the tempest of war has raged. 
It is an empty city, overtaken by death. 

When one thinks of the battle of the Yser, 
the violence of the attacks which the Ger- 
mans renewed week after week, their un- 
ceasing efforts, their reckless sacrifice of 
human life, one wonders how any resistance 
was possible. Our battalions were hardly 
out of the train before they were thrown into 
the thick of the fighting; the country was 
unknown to them; their trenches, hastily 
contrived, were far from perfect; night and 
day they struggled in the mud. Yet, in spite 
of all, they held firm. At every point the 
German thrust was checked. 

The same qualities of endurance and te- 
nacity, the same heroism which won for us 
the battle of the Marne, secured for General 
Foch and the excellent troops he commanded 
this successful issue on the Yser. General 

141 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

Foch*s attitude during these hard days must 
have recalled to many some words which 
he spoke at the Ecole de Guerre with all the 
emphasis of a vigorous faith. He quoted a 
phrase of Joseph de Maistre: "A lost battle 
is a battle one believes oneself to have lost; 
in a material sense no battle can be lost/* 
And he added: "A battle, then, can only 
be lost morally. But, if so, it is also morally 
that a battle is won." One might add to 
this aphorism another: A battle won is a 
battle in which you refuse to acknowledge 
defeat. 

The conduct of General Foch on the Yser 
and in the region of Fere-Champenoise corre- 
sponded exactly with his professions in the 
Ecole de Guerre. For Foch, before putting 
the art of war into practice on the field of 
battle, had already taught it in his lectures 
and published works. His is the deeply inter- 
esting case of a famous professor of strategy 
called by the turn of events to give his theories 
and his teaching a living application. It is 

142 



GENERALS DE CASTELNAU AND FOCH 

worth while to examine how this came about. 
How, and in what circumstances, were the 
theories fitted to the facts ? 

General Foch was bom in 1851, the son 
of a civil servant at Tarbes. He is thus an 
exact contemporary of General de Castelnau 
and General Joffre. As soon as he entered 
college his teacher in mathematics declared: 
"His genius is for geometry; he has the 
makings of a polytechnician." And, in fact, 
General Foch, making good this prediction, 
entered the Ecole Polytechnique, from which, 
in due course, he graduated as an artillery- 
man. While holding the rank of lieutenant- 
colonel, he was appointed professor in strategy 
and general tactics at the Ecole de Guerre. 
Ten years later, after holding commands in 
various arms, he was made director of this 
same school. 

He has condensed the drift of his teaching 
into two books now celebrated, "The Prin- 
ciples of War'' and "The Conduct of War.'' 
Here may be found his whole theory of war 

143 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

illustrated with a prodigal abundance of 
facts and instances. He starts with the 
principle that it is an absolute mistake, in 
war, to take nothing but the material factors 
into account. Over and above the "earthly'* 
element of military art remains what Napo- 
leon called the ''divine'' element. Hence 
war is not an exact science, but a terrific 
and passionate drama, where man with his 
moral and physical faculties is cast for the 
principal part. 

Instruction in war is, however, necessary, 
because for most men the realities of the 
battle-field are not favorable to inspiration. 
Most often they have a paralyzing effect. 
Under fire it is all one can do to carry out 
what one has learned, to act up to the knowl- 
edge which a long and difiicult training has 
built up. The smallest success in military ac- 
tion presupposes long preparation in thought 
and study. Genius is not universal, and in 
its absence a general can rise to the height 
of his task only by method and by science. 

144 



GKNKRALS DE CASIELNAU AND lOCH 

The function of the lonr/ military education 
is to give officers the ri^^ht reflex actions on 
the field of battle. But these are only to be 
acquired by sustained and constant effort. 

"Modem war," says Ckneral Foch, ''is 
a national war." The end it sets itself is 
not the conquest or maintenance of a prov- 
ince but the defense or propagation of prin- 
ciples: spiritual ends and philosophical ideas. 
It brings into play the feelings and passions 
of every soldier. When Bonaparte in his 
famous proclamation to the army of Italy 
based his appeal on those passions he inau- 
gurated a new era in war. 

On the subject of the intellectual discipline 
of commanders General Foch has written 
several pages which rank among the best 
that the ideal of military duty has ever in- 
spired. "In war, except for the commander- 
in-chief, every officer is a subordinate. Every 
one of them, in seeking to command must 
seek to obey. But obedience is a difficult 
art. Many circumstances — to say nothing. 

145 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

of the enemy — interfere with tlie execution 
of tlie order received. To conquer these cir- 
cumstances demands a mental discipUne that 
is intelligent and alert. A conmiander, tlien, 
should first and foremost be a man of char- 
acter, but he should also be capable of the 
comprehension and resource necessaiy for 
obedience. . . . Discipline involves a mental 
activity — an activity of reflection: it is 
not a matter of immobility, like the silence of 
the ranks. Discipline, in a commander, does 
not mean merely tlie execution of orders 
witliin convenient, just, rational, or even 
possible limits. It means a frank entry into 
tlie thoughts and intentions of whoever is 
in supreme command, and tlie adoption of 
every possible means to satisfy tliem. Dis- 
cipline does not mean a silent acquiescence 
that limits itself to whatever can be under- 
taken without compromising oneself; it is 
not the art of avoiding responsibilities. It 
is the art of acting in the spirit of a given 
order, and calls us, to tliat end, to find in 

146 



GENERALS DE CASTELNAU AND FOCH 

our intelligence a means, of executing the 
order, and in our character the energy to 
take the necessary risks/' 

General Foch illustrates these definitions 
by the case of General de Failly, who on the 
4th and 6th of August, 1870, was either un- 
able or unwilling to carry out his orders to 
go first to Bitche and then to Reichshoffen, 
with the result that he failed to take part in 
the battle where the army of Alsace was over- 
whelmed, and where his presence would as- 
suredly have changed the issue. And Gen- 
eral Foch continues: ''At a time like ours, 
which believes itself able to neglect ideal 
elements, which pretends to live realistically, 
rationally, positively, and to avoid abstrac- 
tions, when everything is reduced to terms of 
science and to a more or less ingeniously 
contrived empiricism, we are left with but 
one resource against error and disaster. That 
resource — and it is both sure and fertile 
in results — lies in abandoning ourselves to 
the service of two abstractions of a moral 

147 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

order, duty and discipline. And this ser- 
vice, if it is to lead to success, must be backed 
up by science and good sense." Such are 
the governing ideas of General Foch. 

In daily life the general is a man of few 
words. He speaks with mathematical con- 
ciseness, and his conversation is always full 
of vigor. Cold, calm, and self-possessed, he 
is conspicuous for just the qualities which 
the English most prize. Add to these his 
close knowledge of the English army, along 
with his keen sense of the national tempera- 
ment and character, and we shall easily 
comprehend the influence he exerts over 
every Englishman who comes in contact 
with him. To this influence is due in large 
measure the perfect understanding and co- 
hesion which has existed between the French 
and English armies from the very beginning 
of the war. It was, indeed, far from being 
the simplest of tasks to insure this cohesion. 
Great delicacy and tact were obviously called 
for. General Foch, by the force of character 

148 



GENERALS DE CASTELNAU AND FOCH 

which every Englishman recognizes in him, 
achieved it without the smallest difficulty. 

Superficially, at any rate, the trench war- 
fare in which the two armies have now been 
so long rooted is very different from the kind 
of war that General Foch has written of and 
taught. It was open to the Germans, after 
the battle of the Mame, to continue the 
free-moving warfare from which alone rapid 
and decisive results can be obtained. They 
preferred to dig themselves in. This course, 
it is true, has enabled them thus far to hold 
firm. But by this course, it is no less true, 
they are renouncing the possibility of beat- 
ing us, of putting us once for all out of ac- 
tion. Trench warfare for them was not, and 
can never be, more than a pis-aller. The 
enemy well know that this state of siege, by 
its very nature, and in proportion to its 
length, must necessarily work out to their 
disadvantage, since Germany, cut off as it 
is from all use of the sea, plays the part of 
the besieged, while France and England are 

149 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

the besiegers. Consequently, the mere fact 
that the Germans have chosen or accepted 
this kind of war upon the western front is 
in itself an admission of impotence and de- 
feat. 

Moreover, whether we fight in trenches 
or in the open, it is still by the moral qualities 
of the belligerents that victory will finally 
be decided. From this point of view we have 
no cause for uneasiness, for the moral supe- 
riority is ours. And here the confidence of 
General Foch in the ultimate issue is un- 
equalled. To him, as to General de Castel- 
nau, the war has brought heavy private 
sorrows. His son and his son-in-law were 
killed in the earliest months. He has said 
nothing of his own grief, but has given an 
example to all by redoubling his efforts and 
his perseverance. 

In this war battles, which used to be a 
matter of hours or of days, are now pro- 
longed to months and years. Many on- 
lookers are so struck by the paradox of this 

150 



GENERALS DE CASTELNAU AND FOCH 

slow development that they are tempted 
to disbelieve in any final decision or rup- 
ture of the equilibrium. But we, who live 
among the actors in the drama, have, on the 
contrary, a mathematical certainty that the 
rupture will come and that it will come in 
our favor, and that on an enfeebled Ger- 
many the Allies by a common effort will 
one day deliver, their united stroke. 



151 



IV 

JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

lltb-15tb January, 1915. 
T?OR the last ten days our army corps, 
-■- tired out by the hard fighting which 
we have had in Flanders, on the borders of 
the Yser and in the region around Ypres, 
is resting between Montdidier and Amiens. 

Accustomed as we are to the gray mud 
of Flanders, this dry, clean, smiling country 
on the confines of Picardy and the Ile-de- 
France seems to us paradise. 

There are then really villages which are 
not shelled every day, houses which have 
not been knocked to pieces by big guns, 
good beds in which one may sleep for hours 
almost out of sound of the cannon! And 
above all, there are our own French roads, 
wide and well made, where two or three 
carriages may go abreast without risk of 

152 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

collision or overturning. I think perhaps we 
French are prouder of our good roads than 
of anything else. 

We are rather afraid, however, that our 
time for rest will not be long. 

But to what point on the front will they 
"apply" us? Near Rheims, where we have 
been already, or in the region around Chalons, 
or in Alsace ? One guess is as good as another, 
and of what use is it to rack one's brain 
when it is so simple just to wait? Some of 
these days or nights a telegram will come 
to settle the question. . . . 

The telegram is here, and we are to be 
sent to the — th Army in the Argonne. The 
entrainment of the troops is to begin at once. 
Some of us are to make the journey by motor, 
and I am to go among the first, to get our 
encampment ready. 

Our route is by Compiegne, Villers-Cot- 
terets, Chalons, Ste.-Menehould, and I am 
told that our temporary camp is to be a 
Httle to the north of Revigny. This is the 

153 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

region which the Kronprinz has been "work- 
ing/* and his army deserves especial men- 
tion for the accompUshed way in which it 
sets fire to villages and loots private property. 
In one house which I saw, the most con- 
siderable in the village, absolutely nothing 
had been left except the heaviest pieces of 
furniture. In this place our men were on 
the heels of the Germans, who, therefore, 
did not have time to burn down the houses 
as they did at Sommeilles, Sermaize, Cler- 
mont and almost all the villages of the coun- 
tryside, although they had the same amiable 
intentions here also. During their retreat 
the mayor was arrested and kept a pris- 
oner in the mairie by a guard with fixed bay- 
onets, being told that '* To-morrow morning 
when our men have all got out, you will be 
shot and your village burned to the ground." 
Luckily our soldiers arrived during the night, 
so the commune and its chief magistrate were 
saved. 
The position of our corps will extend from 

154 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

the Aisne to a point somewhat above Servon, 
and our job is to defend a hne which divides 
the wood of La Grurie and stretches beyond 
Four-de-Paris. We shall be in the midst of 
the forest of Argonne. 

I am going ahead to see about our halt- 
ing-places. It snowed last night, the coun- 
try is all white, and the roads in very bad 
condition. 

Ste,-Menehould. — This town fairly swarms 
with troops. I made a short halt at the 
Hotel de Metz, an old inn on the main road 
between Metz and Paris, formerly in great 
repute; the ample kitchen, with its innumer- 
able copper vessels, evoked a vision of the 
postmasters and postilions of a time when 
travelling, if laborious, was also leisurely. 

We went down the valley of the Aisne as 
far as La Neuville-au-Pont. It is a common- 
place village enough, but the main door of the 
church is charming, and it has a delicate 
Renaissance fagade, one of those exquisite 

155 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

jewels which one is surprised and enchanted 
to find even in tlie remotest corners of pro- 
vincial France. 

The front which we hold starts from the 
Aisne, at the ford of Melzicourt, a little 
farther up than Servon, and at first it goes 
straight toward the east, crossing the road 
from Servon to Vienne-le-Chateau, and then 
strikes into the wood of La Grurie, going in 
a wavy line with ins and outs, as far as the 
Fontaine-aux-Chamies, which is in the heart 
of the wood. From there it bends south- 
ward, crossing the brook which ams from 
the Fontaine-aux-Charmes about a kilometre 
from La Harazee, where it makes another 
elbow. Then it turns again toward the south 
until it is only three hundred metres from 
Four-de-Paris, and from there it goes west into 
the Bolante wood. With its countless salients 
and indentations this line is uncomfortably 
lilve the teeth of a saw, which is precisely what 
is going to make it so hard to hold. 

The officers of the corps which we have 

156 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

come to relieve have given us any amount 
of information about our new sector, which 
may be summed up as: "You will have a 
stiff job; the troops you are facing are splen- 
didly equipped for this sort of fighting, they 
are in fine spirits because they have had 
some success, and they mean to push on, 
no matter how many men they lose/* 

The corps in front of us is the Sixteenth 
from Metz, one of the finest and best drilled 
in the whole German army. We had to do 
with the Prussian Guard at the marshes of 
St.-Gond, during the battle of the Mame, and 
a little later before Rheims, and we also met 
the Fifteenth Corps from Strasburg in the 
Ypres region: this last corps and that of 
Metz are in many respects even better than 
the Guard. Our friends also told us that 
the general in command of the Sixteenth 
Corps is Von Mudra, an engineer, very strong 
on making mines, who has with him a num- 
ber of sappers and mine-layers. Every ten 
days or so an attack is made on one or other 

157 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

of our sectors, which is materially helped by 
skilfully prepared mines. 

This is the news which we get from the 
men who have lived here for the past four 
months. It does seem likely that our job 
will not be altogether an easy one. 

As soon as I could get a couple of hours 
to myself, I went to see General Gouraud, 
who was wounded a short time ago and is 
not far from here. 

The road from Ste.-Menehould to Cler- 
mont by Les Islettes is enchanting. It runs 
through the breadth of the great forest, and 
from the top of a hill, before one begins to 
go down toward the hollow of the Biesme, 
there is a wide and noble view over the 
rounded flanks of the Argonne, with woods, 
and still more woods as far as one can see. 

I found General Gouraud all alone, in very 
attractive quarters, half chateau, half farm- 
house. Almost every village in the Argonne 
has one of these houses of the better sort, 
which in most cases still belong to the de- 

158 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

scenclants of the master glass-workers who 
built them. 

The general was hit by a bullet during a 
very hard fight in which his division was 
engaged last month, but by great good luck 
the ball passed between his arm and his 
body, grazing two arteries without touching 
either. It was one of those extraordinary 
chances which fortune reserves for the favor- 
ites on whom she has set her seal, and who 
are destined for great ends. 

Although he still has some fever, and the 
surgeons are obliged from time to time to 
**hack aV him, as he calls it, the general 
has not been willing to give up his com- 
mand. He also is facing an adversary who 
gives him little chance to rest. The Ger- 
mans make one attack after another, but 
are being held in check until such time as 
they can be repulsed. 

What clear, masterful eyes the general 
has, and what a fine soldierly head ! As I 
left him I thought of what was said of one 

159 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

of Napoleon's great generals: "Merely to 
look at hini made men brave/* 

A little snow fell yesterday, and there 
was frost last night. This morning it is 
clear with bright sunshine. We started on 
horseback from La Neuville in the direction 
of La Harazee. After passing Moiremont, 
the road goes down, skirting the forest, to 
Vienne-la-Ville, in the valley of the Aisne. 
Fifteen hundred metres farther, we left this 
valley for that of the Biesme, which cuts 
across the forest of Argonne, first from 
north to south, then from east to west. 
Vienne-le-Chateau comes next, a picturesque 
mountain village among thick trees. The lit- 
tle river runs boiling through it, and perched 
on a rock high above is the old castle which 
dominates the valley. This is one of the 
famous ''passes of the Argonne.'* Another 
kilometre brought us to La Harazee, and 
from there we came back, cutting straight 
across the forest. There are many paths and 

1 60 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

trails, but outside of them the undergrowth 
is so thick that it would be almost impossible 
to force a way through it. The dampness of 
this region is proverbial. Springs gush down 
all the slopes, and the heavy clay soil allows 
no water to run off, so the roads soon be- 
come almost impassable. The men splash 
and slip about, often going in up to their 
ankles, and if they are to be moved from 
one place to another it is absolutely neces- 
sary to make a solid path by laying down 
round billets of wood, one against another. 
A trench is scarcely dug before it is three- 
quarters full of water, and the men have 
to bale it out with pails and shovels, or even 
with their tin plates and mess-bowls, as if 
it were a leaky boat. 

That is the sort of place in which they 
have been fighting desperately, day and 
night, month in and month out. 

In some parts of the forest the firing has 
been so severe and prolonged that the trees 
are cut to pieces; the branches have been 

i6i 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

hacked off one after another, until what is 
left of them suggests the stumps of human 
limbs. 

The narrow valley of the Biesme makes a 
deep cleft in the Argonne, almost like an 
excavation, and it is by no means the only 
one. On all sides and in every direction 
these deep ravines with steep sides, which 
the people of the country call "barribans,'' 
are insurmountable obstacles to any one 
wishing to cross the forest except by certain 
paths. 

January 19th, — We have been here six 
days, and to-day the Germans made three 
attacks on our positions. In the western 
sector a big minemverfer exploded in our 
trenches, knocking them about badly, where- 
upon one of the enemy's columns rushed 
forward against our first line, and managed 
to get a foothold in the sector of one of our 
companies. As soon as that happened our 

162 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

reserve company came to the rescue, and 
took back all the lost ground except in two 
places. After dinner we went at it again, 
and this time got back all the trench, into 
which the Germans had already brought a 
number of bags of cement, in order to lose 
no time in consolidating the position which 
they thought they had taken from us. 

In the sector to the right, the Germans 
exploded two mines in front of the parapet 
of one of our trenches, at a point known as 
the salient of Marie-Therese, but our men 
instantly filled up the great funnel-like hol- 
lows, and our sappers made short work of 
putting the position back as it had been 
before. At six o'clock in the afternoon there 
was yet another attack on our front at Fon- 
taine-aux-Charmes. Our infantry fire and 
the curtain fire of the artillery made the 
Germans stop short in their first advance, 
but they came on again throwing hand- 
grenades and bombs and got as far as our 
trenches. Then the fighting became hand 

163 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

to hand and they were pushed back, def- 
initely this time. 

This afternoon, near Moiremont, our gen- 
eral reviewed a battalion which was on its 
way back from the fighting line. The com- 
panies were all full, and the appearance of 
the men entirely satisfactory. A number 
of them were questioned, and they all an- 
swered most cheerfully. They said the food 
was still very good and they had wine every 
day. One of the captains said to me: '*The 
men have stopped asking each other how 
long the war is likely to last, as they did a 
couple of months ago. They feel sure now 
that it will be long, and they have made up 
their minds to it.'' 

January 20th, — Two German aviators 
have had to come down within our lines 
because their gasoline gave out. One of the 
pilots was a very intelligent captain, just 
out of the War Academy; there was an- 
other officer and two non-commissioned of- 
ficers. Curiously enough — although it is per- 

164 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

fectly natural if one thinks about it — the 
mental attitude of these men was in an in- 
verse ratio to their standing and intelligence. 
The non-commissioned officers believed im- 
plicitly all the stories with which their govern- 
ment and the Teutonic press feed the pop- 
ular credulity; the Russians, for instance, 
were soon to be entirely crushed, and then 
Hindenburg would come back with his armies, 
and France would be crushed in her turn. 
The other officer was somewhat less con- 
fident, but the captain was the least con- 
fident of them all. He did not say much 
while he was being officially questioned, but 
he was less reserved when we were talking 
familiarly upon various subjects. Some one 
said to him that no doubt the German Gen- 
eral Staff would soon start some great of- 
fensive against us, to which he answered at 
once: "Bah! what good would that do?*' 
Again somebody said that the Sixteenth 
Corps, which was opposing us, was presuma- 
bly very tired and should be replaced, and his 
answer to that was: ''Replace it! but with 

165 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

what?" We spoke afterward of the battle 
of the Marne, and his opinion about it was 
most interesting. 

Because of our rapid retreat the Germans 
thought we were beaten, routed, and prac- 
tically annihilated; our sudden halt, and 
our rapid offensive when the great battle 
began, fairly stunned them. It seemed to 
the captain perfectly natural and logical 
that Von Kluck should have made his move- 
ment toward the southeast, in order to at- 
tack our forces, instead of going on straight 
to Paris. It was important to put an end 
to our army by dealing it a paralyzing blow. 
After that Paris would fall to him whenever 
he chose to take it. But what really hap- 
pened was that the aimy which was be- 
lieved to be in disorderly retreat turned at 
the time appointed by its leaders and beat 
the Germans. When any of them are sin- 
cere they own that they cannot get over 
the stupefaction into which they were plunged 
— the reason being that they never have 
understood and never will understand the 

i66 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

temperament and psychology of any nation 
except their own, and that of the French 
nation least of all. 

One of our lieutenants of engineers was 
killed to-day. During their last attack the 
Germans, as soon as they had broken into 
our trench, immediately began to make a 
communication trench leading to their own. 
The lieutenant had started off early to put 
his sappers at work; at the end of this com- 
munication trench he suddenly came face 
to face with a German trooper, who shot 
him dead. The trenches here, as on many 
other points of our line, form such a com- 
plicated labyrinth that even the men who 
know them best often lose their way. Ger- 
mans and French are only a few metres 
apart, and it happens frequently that they 
come up against each other without the 
least warning. 

January 22rf. — Another very heavy at- 
tack, as if to prove to us that the Argonne 

167 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

deserves its evil reputation. It was like all 
the other German attacks here, very care- 
fully prepared and carried out with specially 
adapted arms, perfect technic, and intelli- 
gent organization. To the north of the 
fountain of La Mitte, our line juts out into 
a sharp angle, which goes by the name of 
the Marie-Therese salient. Although I have 
made various investigations, I have never 
been able to find out why it is so called — 
the most usual explanation is that it is near 
the house of a gamekeeper who had a daugh- 
ter of that name. I give the explanation for 
what it is worth. The first troops that came 
into this region, after the battle of the Mame, 
gave to the works they made any names 
which happened to strike their fancy, and 
most of these titles stuck. However it may 
have been christened, it is certain that the 
Marie-Therese salient is hungrily coveted 
by the Germans and it is uncommonly hard 
to hold, because, owing to its shape, it can 
be attacked on three sides at once. 

i68 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

To-day, about ten o'clock in the morning, 
our neighbors the enemy, having pushed 
their mines almost up to our trenches, sud- 
denly burst out, each man armed only with 
two big bombs which he threw as quickly 
as possible. That naturally produced some 
confusion for a minute or two, during which 
a German battalion fiercely assailed Marie- 
Therese on all three sides. One of our com- 
panies was commanded by a lieutenant who 
suddenly went mad from the excitement of 
the hand-to-hand fighting. (That has hap- 
pened several times in the course of the war.) 
All our mitrailleurs were killed, and our men 
forced back into the next trench, which be- 
longed to another regiment. That naturally 
made more confusion; the men fell back 
still farther and the Germans, pressing them 
hard, got hold of some points on our second 
line. A counter-attack was immediately or- 
dered as some of our relieving-troops hap- 
pened to be near. 
tThe news of this engagement reached us 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

in the middle of the day, and tlie genera 
commanding our corps gave the order a 
once to regain our positions at any cost 
even if all our reserves had to be called up 
At two o'clock a battalion of chasseurs mad( 
a push on the left of the salient, got as fa 
as our captured first-line ti'enches and triec 
to hold them, but was thmst back by a fierc< 
attack made by fresh German troops. / 
thii'd counter-attack in the evening was lee 
by Captain M., and there was yet another 
tlie next morning, but after a very hare 
struggle we were only able to get back par 
of our positions. Our imits, altliough ver} 
much mixed up, fairly clung to the ground 
and a new line was quickly organized. Aftei 
that the Germans could not gain anothei 
inch. 

All day and all night we fought furiously 
and with all sorts of weapons; bombs anc 
grenades were freely thro\^^l, but much o; 
the fighting was hand to hand witli bayonets 
knives, and even spades and picks. 

I70 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

A German radiogram announced that they 
had taken four mitrailleuses and two hun- 
dred and fifty prisoners; they really got three 
mitrailleuses, no longer of use, and about one 
hundred prisoners, all wounded except a few 
sappers who were surprised in their mines. 
These attacks, as I have said, are carefully 
thought out and minutely prepared for; even 
the columns which are to repel our counter- 
attacks are all ready. Each man engaged 
knows exactly what he has to do; behind 
those who throw bombs and grenades into the 
trenches come the sappers loaded with bags 
of cement and bundles of faggots to build up 
again at once what their comrades have blown 
to pieces. Ten minutes after an assault such 
a trench is ready for defense again. 

January 25th. — In this trench warfare, 
which becomes more and more like a siege, 
there are three things which above all others 
serve to protect a front and make a success- 
ful attack on it almost impossible. These 

171 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

are: 1, The curtain fire of the artillery; 2, 
barbed-wire entanglements and various other 
obstacles; and 3, the flanking fire of mitrail- 
leuses, machine guns, and rifles. Here, from 
the nature of the ground where we must 
work, and also from the unusual proximity 
of the enemy's lines, these defenses are much 
more difficult to organize than elsewhere. 
In many places the German and French 
lines are not more than ten or twenty metres 
apart, and at certain points they almost 
touch, with the result that rifle-firing and 
bomb-throwing are incessant. 

It would be impossible to set up barbed- 
wire entanglements under such circumstances, 
especially as the Germans are so lavish in their 
use of star shells and flares at night that the 
workers would be as much exposed as in 
daylight. As we cannot do any better we 
try to protect the trenches by throwing out 
in front of them the wire entanglements 
known as "reseaux Brun,'* but these are by 
no means an efficient protection. 

172 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

For the reasons which I have given it is 
hard to manage flanking fire, while the cur- 
tain fire of our batteries is seriously ham- 
pered by the forest trees, the thick under- 
growth, the uneven ground, and also by the 
close neighborhood of the enemy. But our 
artillery officers are geniuses in their line and 
actually manage to get the better of all these 
difficulties, and to establish curtain firing. 
The different means by which they succeed 
are often most ingenious. Sometimes guns 
are placed several kilometres apart, all aimed 
with mathematical precision at sectors of 
the enemy's line only a few metres from each 
other. The artillery observers are stationed 
permanently in the first-line trenches; at 
the least sign of any activity in the enemy's 
line a telephone call from these observers 
is followed almost instantly by a shower of 
shells, and the Germans, who have begun to 
show their pointed helmets make haste to 
scuttle back into their burrows. Any num- 
ber of projected attacks have been stopped 

173 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

in this way before they had fairly begun — 
our "75*s'' are watch-dogs who bark and 
bite at the first suspicious sound. 

That admirable artilleryman Colonel B., 
whose rich imagination is always fertile in 
tricks of his trade and stratagems of all 
sorts, has invented a whole series of artillery 
devices. There is what he calls "tentative 
firing/' to be directed against roads used by 
the enemy, or paths which he may take, 
and also "punitive firing,'' "preliminary fir- 
ing," to make the enemy answer and disclose 
his positions, and so on. Just now the Ger- 
mans are very economical with their artillery. 
Is it because they have not enough, or are 
they saving their guns and shells for more 
serious work? Perhaps they, like ourselves, 
are passing through a crisis in regard to muni- 
tions. But we must not indulge hopes which 
may prove deceiving — we should not forget 
that they are the greatest industrial nation 
on earth! 

January 26th. — Certainly this fighting in 

174 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

the Argonne is like none other that has ever 
been known, and has its own especial methods 
and instruments. Rifles are not much used, 
but on the other hand there is a great con- 
sumption of grenades and bombs of all sorts; 
some go off by friction, others have fuses at- 
tached, and still others explode where they 
fall, like the engines dear to anarchists. 

There is an equal variety in contrivances 
for throwing bombs, and with these the 
Germans are well supplied; each of their 
companies in the Argonne has one large 
and four small ones. We also have them of 
all calibers; the "Celerier," which are made 
from the sockets of shells, and others much 
larger. One of these hurls a terrible pro- 
jectile which our men have affectionately 
christened "the baby.'' It is a pleasure to 
see it on its way through the air toward the 
German trenches, in which it explodes with 
a tremendous crash. Then big blocks of 
stone and clods of earth fly ten metres high, 
mingled with odd legs, arms, and trunks of 

175 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

any Boches who may happen to be too close, 
and the survivors utter fearful yells, for, 
unlike our men, they do not suffer silently. 

On account of the number and variety of 
weapons soldiers in the trenches never have 
a moment's rest. Besides, the only way of 
preventing your enemy from attacking you 
is to keep him busy all the time, and the 
general in command of our corps is con- 
stantly giving orders to this end. Our ad- 
versary must be teased and tormented in- 
cessantly, his work destroyed, his plans 
upset. Has he begun to lay a promising 
mine? Some fine night a lot of our plucky 
young fellows, often volunteers, jump into the 
head of his sap and blow the mine with its 
makers into bits with melinite. 

This imderground warfare, as may be sup- 
posed, goes on all the time. Their sappers 
and ours never stop burrowing and tunnel- 
ling to get nearer each other. It is pure 
delight when you are so fortunate as to get 
up close to the enemy's position without 

176 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

his knowledge; the mine is then made ready, 
and at the appointed time his trench and all 
who are in it go flying into the air. 

But the sappers on his side are also always 
on the alert, and it often happens that the 
whereabouts of your mine is discovered, 
and then it is their turn to come in at one 
end and blow it up, the game being to de- 
stroy you and your work without hurting 
themselves. 

In the hand-to-hand fighting, which we 
have so often in the main trenches and those 
which connect them, the rifle and bayonet 
are not of much use. A shorter weapon, 
like a hatchet, a boarding-cutlass, or the 
short infantry sabre of our grandfathers 
would be more effective at close quarters. 
Nearly all the German infantrymen are 
armed with cutlasses. Our men prefer revolv- 
ers, and are given them whenever it is pos- 
sible; they also carry hand-grenades and 
bombs hooked into their belts. 

It seems that we are getting back to the 

177 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

sort of warfare which was waged hundreds 
of years ago. I was reading, last spring, an 
absorbingly interesting account by M. Gus- 
tave Schlumberger of the siege of Con- 
stantinople, and really the fighting between 
the Germans and ourselves here in the Ar- 
gonne is not very unlike the struggle between 
Turk and Greek under the Long Walls. 

January 29th. — A week to the day after 
the division on our right was violently at- 
tacked we have had another assault, still 
more violent, on our left division. 

About five o'clock I was waked by the 
heaviest firing which I have heard since we 
came here. It was bitter cold; the ther- 
mometer had gone down in the night below 
9 degrees,* but later the sun shone bril- 
liantly in a cloudless sky as we started on 
horseback toward Vienne-le-Chateau, tak- 
ing a road to the left in order to avoid Moire- 
mont. Between Vienne-la-Ville and Vienne- 

* 15° Fahrenheit. 
178 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

le-Chateau some "77** shells fell in the fields 
close beside us, and when we reached the 
village the colonel commanding the artillery 
of our division said to us: "We have been 
obliged to evacuate our first-line trenches, 
and I have just given the order to fire on 
them/' That was certainly serious. What 
could have happened? It was this: as one 
brigade was relieving another, about half 
past six, the enemy made a lively attack on 
our first line by means of bomb-throwers 
with violent artillery curtain firing on the 
rear zone. One of our salients was also 
blown up by a mine. This was all accord- 
ing to their usual way of beginning an as- 
sault. Immediately afterward our whole 
front, of three battalions, was heavily at- 
tacked, the enemy's troops advancing by 
fours in close formation, with drums and 
fifes playing. Our right battalion was pushed 
back and the officer in command wounded. 
The centre battalion appeared to be sub- 
merged, and almost completely wiped out; 

179 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

as a result of this sudden falling back, the 
left wing of the brigade next to ours lost 
some of its first-line trenches. The general 
commanding the division at once began to 
organize three counter-attacks, the corps 
commander having given him all the reserve 
strength which could be spared. The two 
first attacks did not get beyond what was 
called "the ravine of the mitrailleuses.'' 
The third carried a trench which was being 
made by the Germans, but was then stopped 
by the barbed-wire entanglements which they 
had already put up. 

Toward the end of the day yet another 
counter-attack was launched; that also was 
unsuccessful, because the men could not 
force their way through an impenetrable 
thicket. The corps commander then or- 
dered that we should take advantage of the 
darkness to strengthen our second line of 
defense. This had several advantages over 
our first, as it was more solidly constructed 
and also had flanking protection; the forest 

i8o 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

was also not so dense, which would allow 
our artillery to employ curtain firing. 

The next morning we had trustworthy in- 
formation from two different sources, which 
gave us an idea of how desperate the fight- 
ing had been on the day before. We learned 
that before they went into it the German 
soldiers had been made drunk; a number of| 
our men said to me: "They fairly stank o:^ 
alcohol." There was absolutely no doubtj 
about it, and the same thing has been noticed 
here a number of times; it even happens 
sometimes that ether takes the place of 
alcohol. 

The men of our centre battalion, sur- 
rounded from the beginning of the attack, 
fought at bay in their trenches all day long 
and half the night. Very few unwounded 
prisoners fell into the enemy's hands; when 
a man had fired his last cartridge he dropped 
where he stood. We heard that the battalion 
commander, who was wounded very early 
in the assault, said to his liaison agent: *'Go 

i8i 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

and report to the colonel at once. As for 
us, we shall die here." 

Repeated fights like this make these months 
in the Argonne seem like one long battle. 
The Germans show great vigor and keen- 
ness; they spend themselves in one attack 
after another, each methodically planned 
and violently carried out. 

But what, after all, have they made by 
these efforts? Up to the present time their 
most fortunate strokes have only won them 
a few hundred metres. 

Their General Staff has evidently taken 
a lively interest in all these operations in 
the forest. A long article published re- 
cently in the Gazette de Francjort, and after- 
ward reprinted as a pamphlet, was called 
"The War in the Forest of Argonne,'' and in 
it the German gains were set forth. I need 
not say that they were magnified and ex- 
aggerated to the fullest extent. Old Field- 
Marshal Count Haeseler lives in a little 
village not far from here and from there he 

182 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

follows all movements with the utmost at- 
tention, and no doubt is consulted as to them. 
The Kronprinz, who commands the army 
which is directly opposite us, has his head- 
quarters at Stenay. Is it not necessary for 
dynastic reasons that he should sometimes 
succeed, whatever the price of his victory ? 

It seems to me that there are both local 
and general reasons to account for such 
persistent efforts. In the end of September, 
after their thrust in the region of the Woevre 
had made them masters of St.-Mihiel, the 
Germans were able for a time to indulge in 
the flattering hope of surrounding Verdun. 
To accomplish that end they tried, on the 
west, the same movement which they had 
found successful to the eastward. A series 
of attacks in the forest of Argonne, or on 
its borders, would allow them, they thought, 
to gain possession of the railway between 
Ste.-Menehould and Verdun, and after that 
it would be comparatively easy to invest 
the fortress. They were all the more en- 

183 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

coil raged because in the first fighting in the 
Argonne they were able to get the upper 
hand, on account of their superior organiza- 
tion and equipment. They had any num- 
ber of sappers and miners, for instance, and 
from IVIetz, which is quite near, they could 
get all sorts of supplies. But in spite of their 
efforts, their advance during the last four 
months has been insignificant ; it seems likely 
that Ste.-Menehould will be a goal as impos- 
sible for them to attain as Calais or Paris. 

February 1st. — This afternoon the Ger- 
mans have been exploding large mines under 
the salient of Bagatelle, where one of our 
sectors ends. While both wings of our works 
crimibled into the craters made by the ex- 
plosion, a troop of the enemy rushed at the 
centre, where there w^ere no accessory de- 
fenses; tliat particular place was so con- 
stantly swept by fire that it was impossible 
to put up barbed wire. A counter-attack 
should have been made immediately, but it 

184 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

was somewhat delayed, because the battal- 
ion of reserves did not assemble quite quickly- 
enough . The further we go the more we are 
convinced that it is imperatively necessary 
to have our reserves close at hcmd, and al- 
ways ready to be called upon. 

February 2d, — As I was on my way back 
from the Croix-Gentin, about five o'clock this 
afternoon, I met Lieutenant M., who gave me 
a piece of bad news. One of our best friends 
and comrades. Captain Boiteux, was killed 
by a bullet in the head as he was inspecting 
one of our first-line trenches. He was pass- 
ing quickly across one of our loopholes when 
he was hit; the Germans have special marks- 
men detailed to fire at these gaps in the para- 
pets whenever they perceive the least move- 
ment. What an admirable officer we lose 
in him ! Slender and lithe, with a handsome, 
intelligent, dark head; devoted to his work, 
active, and full of energy, always occupied 
and always ready for any duty, no matter 

18:: 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

how difficult it might be. He came to us 
from the Ecole de Guerre, and, although he 
was only thirty-four years of age, he was 
married and the father of three little girls. 
We used to have many long talks in the 
evenings when he came in, all covered with 
mud from making his rounds; then sud- 
denly he would say: **Now I must be off 
— I want to write to my wife before I 
turn in.'' 

They have just brought back his body, 
and laid it on a bed in a bare and wretched 
room, hurriedly made a little less dreary by 
some wreaths of leaves and a few flags. He 
is dressed as he fell; his head is wrapped in 
bandages, leaving only his face uncovered; 
on his breast is his kepi, pierced with the 
bullet-hole. A few candles give a faint and 
timid light; two soldiers, with fixed bayonets, 
stand immovably on guard; a priest, who is 
also a stretcher-bearer, kneels at the foot of 
the bed, reading prayers from his missal, and 
one after another our officers watch beside 

i86 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

their comrade who, in the dim light, seems to 
be quietly asleep. 

February 3d. — As to the morale of the 
Germans, we could not do anything more 
dangerous than to deceive ourselves in re- 
gard to it. It is better, for every reason, to 
face the truth and acknowledge it. The 
German spirit is still undaunted. Their 
soldiers fight admirably, and when they are 
surrounded they often prefer to die rather 
than surrender. Notwithstanding this, how- 
ever, the letters which they receive from their 
people at home show much less confidence 
than in the first months of the war. There 
are frequent signs of fatigue and discourage- 
ment; the women, more particularly, com- 
plain bitterly of the length of the war, the 
high price of provisions, etc. 

February 10th. — ^We went this morning to 
Vienne-le-Chateau and then on to La Hara- 
zee. While we were there, about half past 
nine, a very violent attack was made on the 

187 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

Marie-Therese salient. After his usual fash- 
ion, the enemy blew up part of our trenches 
by means of a mine, and then at once poured 
a considerable force into the breach thus 
made. The first ranks were armed with 
bombs and grenades; then followed a great 
mass of men who managed to occupy part 
of our line. Our reser\^e battalion, which 
came up at once, delivered a counter-attack, 
which stopped their advance; other counter- 
attacks were carried out during the day, and 
we won back part of the lost ground. The 
hand-to-hand fighting was more than usually 
ferocious, as the Germans, who for the most 
I part had been made dmnk beforehand, mas- 
( sacred their prisonei'S. There is abundant 
testimony as to this fact, and of a kind which 
does not admit of contradiction. An ad- 
jutant and two private soldiers deposed under 
oath that they had witnessed the follow^ing 
incident: two of our men were surrounded 
by a group of Germans, who first disarmed 
them, and immediately afterward shot them 
down with revolvers. 

i88 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

February 11th, — The chasseurs of the — th 
battalion captured a German mitrailleuse 
the other day, and the general commanding 
the division offered them the usual prize 
of two hundred francs which the General 
Staff gives on such occasions, whereupon one 
of the men who had taken the gun said to 
him : " No, thank you. General ! We are quite 
willing to have our heads mashed for France, 
but not for money/' This was from a poor 
peasant of Lorraine, to whom two hundied 
francs meant a fortune. 

February 12th. — This forest of Argonne is 
full of enchanting bits of scenery; valleys, 
always fresh and cool, with cheerful little 
streams running through them; undergrowth 
where lights and shadows play; gentle slopes 
with flowing lines; pools where the great 
trees look at their own likenesses in the clear 
water. 

And all these charming woods and streams 
and springs have the most delightful names 
imaginable, such as the Bois de la Viergette, 

189 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

le Ruisseau des Emerlots, la Fontaine la 
Houyette, la Fontaine-aux-Charmes, la Fon- 
taine-Madame. 

The ridge which forms a sort of backbone 
to the forest is called La Haute Chevauchee 
— a name which makes one think of the 
chase here long ago, when the stag was run 
down by huntsmen and hounds after furious 
galloping through the leafy alleys. 

About noon a great number of Germans, 
in columns of fours, fell upon our battalion 
to the north of the old salient of Marie- 
Therese, but as their advance was stopped 
by infantry fire, while our artillery swept 
their rear, they were thrown back, leaving 
many dead behind them. 

At one o'clock in the afternoon our ar- 
tillery began, in order to prepare for an at- 
tack which was to be launched an hour later. 
Two companies of the — th battalion of 
chasseurs dashed toward the enemy's posi- 
tions, but could not get far, as they were 

190 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

met by a lively fusillade, combined with the 
fire of some mitrailleuses which were hidden 
behind trees, and had therefore escaped our 
artillery. One detachment, however, man- 
aged to gain about fifty yards and get into 
a communicating trench very near the enemy's 
line, where they held on obstinately. 

February 13th, — ^We have blown up a Ger- 
man mine in front of our left division, to the 
east of Bagatelle. The Germans attacked 
the road to Bagatelle on both sides, forcing 
back our sentries. They then pushed along 
through our left-hand trenches and pro- 
ceeded to wall themselves in behind sacks 
filled with earth. Three companies promptly 
reinforced our line of defense on that side, 
and by nine o'clock in the evening our troops 
had destroyed the enemy's barriers, reoc- 
cupied the entire line, and put our observa- 
tion posts back where they had been. Along 
the front of our right division the Germans 
succeeded in blowing up one of our stores of 

191 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

explosives, which was in the Blanleuil trenches, 
on the crest between the Ravin Sec and the 
Ravin de la Fontaine-Madame, but a cur- 
tain of artillery fire put an end at once to any 
possibility of attack on their part. 

All night there was great activity on their 
side and ours, especially in the direction of 
the Four-de-Paris, and in the central sector 
we advanced about five hundred and fifty 
metres. 

February 14ih, — Everywhere, but especially 
toward Marie-Therese, the enemy is un- 
commonly lively. We interfere mth him as 
much as possible, by means of bombs and 
grenades, having always in mind the in- 
structions of the general in command of our 
corps, which are that we must keep our 
morale superior to that of our adversary, and 
at the first reasonable moment take the in- 
itiative in attack. 

February 16ih. — Our artillery is now sup- 
porting the left division of the corps next to 

192 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

us, which is at grips with a strong German 
force in the region of Bolante. During the 
night we have made several lucky strokes 
against the Boche mines in different places; 
it seems to us that our foe is becoming some- 
what less aggressive. The roles are gradu- 
ally changing; in the beginning, thanks to 
his superior equipment, and also to his great 
strength in sappers and miners, he had rather 
the upper hand, but now he seems, little by 
little, to be losing it. 

In the meantime, our lines of defense are 
everywhere more strongly organized and the 
curtain of our artillery established wherever 
it is necessary, while the vigilance of our 
officers and men never flags for a moment. 
The result is that the enemy's attacks — 
and Heaven knows he makes them often 
enough! — are for the most part failures. 
From time to time, after a shower of bombs 
and grenades, the Roches come out of their 
trenches and advance in close formation. 
In a few seconds they are pelted with a hail 

193 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

of shells and bullets, and back they go quickly 
into their holes, except those who lie dead 
outside their parapets. At other times they 
tunnel their way along, in order to keep 
their men as much as possible out of the open, 
but these tunnels often turn out to be graves 
for the human moles who dig them; our men 
are always on the watch, ready to throw 
bombs which frequently leave no one alive. 

All along our front, by untiring vigilance 
and incessant activity, we manage to frus- 
trate the plans of our adversary before they 
can be matured, but it is easy to understand 
what fatigue and mental strain this involves 
for our troops and their leaders. In the first- 
line trenches our men are on the alert dur- 
ing the whole twenty-four hours, standing in 
mud and water, subject to constant fire from 
every sort of projectile. Imagine what life 
under such conditions must be ! 

The whistling of shells and bullets in the 
forest makes strange, fantastic music; in 
these narrow ravines the least sound repeats 
itself with astonishing amplitude and so- 

194 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

nority, and as the troops which are held in 
reserve must be as near the first line as 
possible, it is almost as hard for them to rest 
as if they were actually under fire, while in 
the encampments where they go when they 
are relieved they are almost always subject 
to violent bombardment. 

But why dwell on all this fatigue and 
danger? The spirit of our men remains 
beyond praise; it is something sublime, al- 
most miraculous, compelling one to bow be- 
fore it in all humility. It must be remem- 
bered that, even on days when there is no 
serious fighting, the losses in killed and 
wounded often mount up into the hundreds. 

I was present the other day at the review 
of a regiment which was on its way back 
from the trenches. A cold rain was falling, 
and the men were covered with mud from 
head to foot. They were almost all young, 
surprisingly young, with beardless faces, but 
all had the same expression of seasoned 
courage and resolution. 

I remember being particularly struck by 

195 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

the proud bearing of one of these "Marie- 
Louises," * a slender little corporal. The 
general stopped before him to ask some ques- 
tions, and his battalion commander said: 
"He's the best bomb-thrower in the batta- 
lion; no one can touch him at hurling hand- 
grenades. He has only been with us for three 
months, but at the very first opportunity 
we'll make him a sergeant." Truly it may 
be said of such as he what Napoleon said of 
his conscripts: ''Honor and courage radiate 
from them." 

Many of the oflficers are scarcely older 
than the men whom they command. We 
had a number of second lieutenants sent 
to us lately, young fellows who had just passed 
their examinations to enter St.-Cyr. They 
all arrived full of dash and vigor, ready to 
throw themselves heart and soul into what- 
ever was expected of them. 

It is not uncommon to see the cross of the 

* A name given to the students at the Military School of 
St.-Cyr. 

196 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

Legion of Honor shining here and there on 
one of these young breasts. Some of them 
have already been wounded two or three 
times, and are veterans, rich in experience 
and full of resource. It is not wonderful 
that their men regard them with mingled 
admiration and respect. What a send-off 
these boys have, what a magnificent entry 
into life ! To the heart of youth the brightest 
beams of the rising sun are pale compared 
with the first rays of glory — so said Vauve- 
nargues, who himself was a soldier. 

February 17th, — This is the day set for 
the offensive on our left in the Hurlus region, 
in which the business of our corps is to keep 
up such incessant activity that the Ger- 
mans who face us will not be able to with- 
draw any of their troops to use elsewhere. 
All day we have heard very heavy firing 
toward the west. Our right-hand division 
has been executing a series of operations, 
one of them being to blow up a German 

197 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

blockhouse on the right bank of the stream 
which flows out of the Fontaine-aux-Charmes. 
Everything which was not destroyed by the 
explosion is being hammered by one of our 
**65" guns, at a range of four hundred metres. 
About ten o'clock we exploded a mine under 
a trench in the Four-de-Paris region, and 
part of a battalion of chasseurs jumped into 
the gap thus made and pushed on to the next 
line. Immediately a strong German coun- 
ter-attack was launched, advancing as usual 
in columns of fours, pushing our force back 
and getting as far as the trench which had 
been torn up by our mine. There they were 
met by a mixed fire of infantry and artillery, 
under which they fell back quickly, leaving 
many dead behind them. 

The objective of our principal attack was 
the ridge of Blanleuil, and every detail had 
been most carefully thought out. 

While the battalions chosen for the attack 
were resting, during the last four days, three 
large mines which we had laid under the 

198 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

enemy's positions were all ready to be touched 
off. All the assaulting party were trained 
bomb-throwers, and the troops were arranged 
in three echelons. The duty of the first was 
to jump into the enemy's works directly after 
the explosion, and to push on as much far- 
ther as possible. The second echelon was to 
support the first and hold the ground which 
had been taken, and the third was to back 
them both up and make sure of success. 
Each assaulting column was preceded by 
bomb-throwers; then came the chasseurs 
with fixed bayonets, then the sappers from 
the engineer corps carrying tools and sacks 
of earth, and last of all a mitrailleuse. At 
eight o'clock the mines blew up under the 
German trenches, one of them exploding at 
the same time a mine which the Germans 
themselves had made. At the same moment 
our artillery began a curtain fire on the rear 
of the adversary's positions, keeping it up 
on all points from which he might attempt to 
make a flanking movement. In another mo- 

199 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

ment our three assaulting columns emerged 
from the communication trenches in which 
they had formed and advanced, headed by 
their section commanders. The battalion 
commander whose duty it was to direct the 
attack, a man of the most splendid courage, 
stood upright on the parapet of the trench, 
calmly pointing out their way to his men 
with his walking-stick. Our columns flung 
themselves at the enemy's trench, breaking 
into it in three places; about a hundred Ger- 
mans who were in it were killed, and their 
bodies left lying there; we took four prison- 
ers and also brought back a mitrailleuse. By 
half past eight we held three hundred and 
fifty metres of the enemy's first line; all four 
section commanders had been killed or 
woimded, but the men were now fairly 
started; part of them rushed on, leaped into 
the enemy's communication trenches, and 
thus reached the trenches of his second line, 
which were crowded with Germans abun- 
dantly supplied with bombs and all other am- 

200 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

munition. After the first moment of sur- 
prise, violent counter-attacks were poured 
against our men from all the communication 
trenches at the German rear, and they were 
obliged to fall back to the first-line trench 
which they had just taken. This was very 
deep and narrow at the top, widening out at 
the bottom; the parapet facing our line was 
low, but much higher at the back; this was 
to prevent our firing on the German lines, 
and also to afford shelter to their men in the 
event of a counter-attack. 

By this time our engineers had begun to 
fill up the holes made by our shells, and 
to block the ends of the trench which we 
had taken with sacks of earth, in order to 
prevent an attack through the communica- 
tion trenches. The second echelon now came 
to reinforce the first, and two of our mitrail- 
leuses took up their positions. A German 
company showed itself in the open only to be 
mown down by one of them instantly, for 
which the revenge was a violent counter-fire, 

20I 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

and several of our gunners were killed or 
wounded beside their pieces. The Germans 
now recommenced their counter-attacks; 
these were particularly directed at our right, 
where the incessant rain of their bombs made 
our positions hard to hold. The officer in 
command had already reinforced the front 
by two companies of the third echelon; a 
third company was at once brought up and 
held close by as a reserve. The trenches and 
communication trenches were as full as it 
was practicable to have them; it was impos- 
sible to move many men on the ground be- 
tween our line and the trench which we had 
taken, because it was covered with an inex- 
tricable tangle of felled trees and other ob- 
structions. 

Our last company kept those who were 
fighting supplied with grenades, bombs, and 
also with sacks of earth, which are almost as 
useful. 

The Germans renewed their attacks over 
and over again, and by slipping along the 

202 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

communication trenches they managed to 
get to the middle of our first line, but each 
time as they came on they were repulsed. 
Soon after midday they pelted the trench 
which we had taken from them and also our 
first and second lines with their "77's*' and 
"105's," and minenwerfer. The ground was 
ploughed up, and our trenches badly knocked 
about; the battalion which formed the rear- 
guard of our first line of defense had twenty 
men killed and fifty-three wounded as they 
stood in the trench. 

Between half past one and two o'clock 
the Germans tried a bayonet charge in close 
formation. That was broken up by our 
rifle-fire, but they soon came back, con- 
verging from all the communication trenches, 
and hurling a great number of explosives. 
The fiery rain of bombs became more and 
more severe, especially on the right; one 
chasseur after another was killed or wounded. 
Toward half past four we lost that part of 
the trench, only because all the men who 

203 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

held it were dead. Their battaUon comman- 
der, who had risked his Ufe a hundred times 
since the morning, stood on the parapet 
calling out, "Steady, chasseurs! Stand 
firm!" until he fell over with a bullet in his 
brain. 

The general commanding the division gave 
the order to bring up another reserve bat- 
talion, and to launch a counter-attack with 
what was left of the battalion actually en- 
gaged, but that effort was a failure for two 
reasons — the ground was not clear enough, 
and we were short of bombs. 

The enemy then made a flanking attack 
on the other part of our trench; one by 
one our men were assailed by an uninter- 
rupted shower of bombs. They fell back, 
inch by inch, taking two hours to cover 
two hundred metres, and leaving forty per 
cent of their number on the way. Little by 
little we retired from the trench we had taken, 
and fell back on our positions. Our general 
ordered us to draw together on our front, and 

204 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

to hold on there. Our artillery had supported 
the infantry throughout, but at certain times 
it could not be altogether effective because 
our lines and those of the enemy were too 
close to each other. 

Our engineers kept each attacking column 
supplied with all that was necessary to make 
the captured trench fit for defense again; 
all day long they toiled hard under a pound- 
ing fire which knocked their work to pieces 
as soon as it was in place. The struggle 
was magnificent; it is not too much to say 
that there was no foot of ground lost unless 
the man who held it was killed. There were 
no more bombs, there was very little am- 
munition; the men in the wings, which were 
overcrowded and flanked, could not be sup- 
plied from the centre, because the communi- 
cating trench was obstructed. A company 
of chasseurs fought for two hours with the 
rifles and ammunition of the Germans, throw- 
ing back at them their own unexploded 
bombs. 

205 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

It was another example of the absolute 
necessity of supplying our troops with so 
many good and effective bombs that they 
may be used without stint. 

All the units engaged, whether for the at- 
tack and retention of the enemy's position, 
or for the retention of our own positions at 
Blanleuil and other points on our front, were 
altogether admirable in their courage, dash, 
and tenacity. The officers did their duty 
nobly. The Germans certainly suffered 
severely; their losses are said to be con- 
siderably heavier than ours. 

February 18th. — This morning, about three 
o'clock, the first German shells fell upon the 
village where we are now. The familiar 
whistling sound walked me, but nobody got 
up. It was dark and also cold — two ex- 
cellent reasons for staying where we were, 
and after all no harm was done, except to 
some chairs and plates in one of the officers' 
mess-rooms. 

206 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

February 20th, — While I was at Chalons 
for a couple of hours to-day, I saw a pro- 
cession of four or five hundred Germans 
who had been taken prisoners yesterday 
near Perthes. They went through the prin- 
cipal street, surrounded on all sides by ter- 
ritorial troops with fixed bayonets; the pop- 
ulace of the town was much excited. Most 
of the men seemed to me to be of a type 
distinctly inferior to those which I have 
hitherto seen. Some were knock-kneed, some 
round-shouldered, some sickly-looking — there 
were all varieties of physical deficiency. 

What a contrast to those superb prisoners 
of the Prussian Guard whom we took around 
Rheims! They were strapping fellows, vig- 
orous and well set up, giving a vivid impres- 
sion of youth in its prime. 

February 27th. — The fighting on our left, 
at Hurlus, still goes on. This morning while 
we were galloping on the heights of Mont- 
Yvron, the sound of the cannon seemed to 

207 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

be quite near. Going by Maffrecourt, one 
reaches other hills which spread out in the 
arc of a circle. The soil is dry — more like 
the chalky earth of Champagne than the 
mud and slime to which we are used in 
Argonne. To the north we looked over the 
village and chateau of Hans, the place where 
Attila and Brunswick halted, as one may 
learn from an inscription there. To the left 
lies the village and hill of Valmy, with its 
column to commemorate the battle — a 
fine shaft, visible from a long distance on 
every side. The heart of Kellermann is at 
its base, and the stone which covers it bears 
Goethe's celebrated phrase: '*This place and 
day mark a new era in the history of the world, 
and you may say *I was there.' '' We are on 
the very ground where the battle was fought, 
— a conflict more important in its relation 
to history than from the military point of 
view. The Duke of Brunswick's army, hav- 
ing forced its way through the passes of the 
Argonne, which Dumouriez has rather in- 

208 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

accurately called the Thermopylae of France, 
faced Germany and had its back turned 
toward Paris. It was just the opposite with 
the army of Kellermann. The fighting re- 
solved itself into a violent cannonade, for 
the duke, disconcerted by the military aspect 
and firm stand of the revolutionary troops 
(whom he had expected to turn tail at his 
first volley), did not dare come to closer 
quarters. Goethe has described the pro- 
found discouragement of Brunswick's of- 
ficers the night after the battle. They 
passed it in the old inn at the sign of the 
Moon, which still stands on the highroad 
between Ste.-Menehould and Chalons. It 
had rained so hard for the last week that 
their baggage was stuck somewhere in the 
mud; the inn was execrable and they could 
get nothing to eat; altogether the plan of 
coercing revolutionary France seemed to them 
more and more hazardous. 

The present descendants of the duke have 
shown themselves more persevering, which 

209 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

will mean all the more credit to us when we 
succeed in turning them out ! 

March 2d. — We are gradually getting the 
upper hand of the enemy; the initiative of 
attack is usually on our side, and when the 
Germans try their hands at it their efforts 
almost always come to nothing. We owe 
our success here, as everywhere else, to three 
qualities — energy, tenacity, and patience. 
We have just had another proof of this in 
a fight which took place to-day at Blan- 
leuil. The enemy had been active before 
our position there for several days; possession 
of that rise would allow him to enfilade our 
salient at Bagatelle, and by steady work 
he had been able to push his advance works 
to within about twenty yards of our trenches. 
His game was to keep hammering at our 
first line with his "77" and "105" guns, at 
short range, throwing a hail of shells which 
smashed our trenches first at one place and 
then at another, so that we were kept con- 
stantly busy repairing them. 

2IO 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

At daybreak on the 1st of March the firing 
became still more violent, and the "105's" 
also turned their attention to the rear of our 
position; everything pointed to an attack 
before long. 

Just then we had one battalion in our 
first line, and another as a reserve in the 
sector to the rear. At the request of the in- 
fantry, our artillery opened a curtain fire to 
cover the front of our trenches. The gen- 
eral in command of the division ordered two 
more battalions to advance in the direction 
of La Harazee, and, as the neighborhood of 
Four~de-Paris was also under severe fire, a 
brigade was quickly moved to our line at 
Biesme. 

About a quarter past seven in the morn- 
ing three mines were blown up under our 
trenches, making a deep crater in their 
centre, and two smaller ones to the right 
and left, overturning the parapets and bury- 
ing many of our men beneath them. The 
smoke and dust had not cleared away before 
the enemy was in the craters throwing bombs, 

211 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

and, thus being in our trench, they attempted 
to get into those which adjoined it. 

The four officers and many non-commis- 
sioned officers of the two companies which 
were in our first line were killed or wounded 
by this onset. The men of our second line 
had not time to come up through the com- 
munication trenches, and could only manage 
to retard the assailants with their rifle-fire; 
these filtered through at one spot after an- 
other, while a hand-to-hand struggle was go- 
ing on in that part of the trench which had 
not yet been taken. 

The Germans brought up heavy reinforce- 
ments, but these, as they arrived, were met 
by the fire of our artillery and mitrailleuses; 
their advance was thus frequently checked, 
but part of our first battalion had already 
been engulfed by the German flood. Their 
men were no sooner in our trenches than they 
used them against us with astonishing rapid- 
ity; their attacking column had always at 
its heels a swarm of workers bearing sacks 
of earth, bundles of faggots and metal shields, 

212 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

with which they quickly improvised a parapet. 
We managed to stop them, however, by a 
tremendous effort, and our right-hand com- 
pany held its position, although with heavy 
loss. 

A counter-attack, launched by another 
battalion, first succeeded in checking the 
advance of the Germans, and then began to 
push them back. Yet another battalion, 
ready and close at hand, could not come in 
because the field was swept by the fire of 
the enemy's "77's'' and "lOffs,'' as well as 
by that of his mitrailleuses and infantry, 
and he was also able to enfilade us, which 
made communication exceedingly difficult. 

The general in command renewed his order 
that our positions should be maintained, at 
whatever cost, and ordered also that prep- 
arations should be made for a counter-attack, 
with the co-operation of a company of en- 
gineers, as soon as it was dark. 

The Germans could not supply their left 
with the reinforcements on which they were 
counting, because they were continually 

213 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

shelled by our artillery, but they contrived 
to bring some troops up on their right, not- 
withstanding the fire of our mitrailleuses, 
by way of the ravine of the Fontaine-Ma- 
dame. 

The artillery of our division proceeded 
forthwith to make careful preparations for 
the nocturnal counter-attack, which was to 
have the valuable help of several batteries 
attached to the adjoining division. The as- 
saulting battalion reconnoitred the groimd 
as far as possible, and by nightfall the dif- 
ferent companies, well furnished with bombs 
and grenades, faced the forces which they 
were to attack. 

At ten minutes before seven our artillery 
began a lively fire upon the enemy's positions 
in general, followed up by a more particular 
attack intended to batter down his flanking 
protections. 

Just at this time a tremendous storm 
broke, accompanied by heavy snow-squalls. 
But it could not hinder our attacks; as soon 
as a whistle gave the signal our men leaped 

214 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

forward and rushed with fixed bayonets 
against the enemy, in spite of heavy artillery 
fire, crying out: "Hurrah! Forward!*' 

By this first dash one company succeeded 
in breaking through as far as the German 
second line at several points; little by 
little our men edged their way into the 
trenches, clearing them out with the bayonet 
as they went. For more than four hours 
the fight went on in this first-line trench and 
in the communicating trenches leading to 
it, in which the Germans had barricaded 
themselves. The ground was won foot by 
foot; while our men fought their way they 
had to demolish obstructions, clear out heaps 
of corpses, and put the trench in serviceable 
condition. At last we succeeded in taking 
back almost all our ground; only an in- 
significant part was still in the enemy's 
hands. We found much valuable material 
in the German trenches; tools, sacks of 
earth and shields which we turned to ac- 
count at once, to say nothing of many rifles 
and cartridges. Our men bore themselves 

215 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

nobly; the young soldiers went to the at- 
tack with the courage and steadiness of 
veterans, for which they were commended 
by the corps commander in a general order. 
The struggle was so desperate that almost 
no prisoners were taken; we had only four 
in all, two of whom were severely and two 
slightly wounded, and from what they told 
us we gathered that only two Frenchmen, 
both of them badly hurt, had been taken. 

The German loss was certainly heavy; 
for we took up more than a hundred bodies, 
and the troops at their rear were held in 
close formation for some time under the 
fire of our heavy guns and mitrailleuses. 
Judging from what our prisoners told us, 
our shelling of their trenches was remarkably 
accurate and effective. 

I met an officer this morning who had 
just been for six days in the first- line trenches, 
at a place where the fighting was especially 
fierce. He looked dazed, like a man who 
has had a knock on the head from which 

216 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

he has not yet recovered. His voice sounded 
muffled and some of his words were indis- 
tinct: "I beg your pardon/' he said to me; 
"it's very odd, but I don't seem able to say 
what I want to." During the fight on March 
1st, when our trench fell into the hands of 
the Germans, five of our men retreated to 
the dark end of a communication trench. 
When our troops retook the trench these men 
came out, but in the half-light they were 
mistaken for Boches and fired on. Their 
sergeant was killed, and the four others went 
back into their hole again. After a time 
they threw over the parapet pebbles wrapped 
in paper, on which was written, "We are 
Frenchmen; don't fire on us," and they 
signed their names and gave their section 
and company. They were then naturally re- 
ceived with open arms and fed back to 
strength, for they were half dead with 
hunger. 

The long list of our battles in the Argonne 
shows the triumph of persistent effort. 

217 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

Throughout the war our victories have been 
due to energy and tenacity, a fact which is 
even more evident here than elsewhere. 

End of July, 1915, — After four months 
spent on another part of the front, the chances 
of military service have brought me into Ar- 
gonne again, and I find myself back in the 

interesting little city of X , the military 

centre of the district. It is still crowded and 
noisy; its principal street, with a square at 
either end, is jammed day and night with 
long lines of wagons, automobiles, and motor- 
trucks; here and there on the pavement a 
civilian's dark coat makes him conspicuous 
among the throng of men in uniform. 

The little town has become one enormous 
shop, a shop with a hundred doors and a 
thousand counters — a very Land of Promise 
for dealers in tinned food of every sort. 

During these first days my duty has 
obliged me to go over a wide stretch of 
country, and I have revisited the dreary 

218 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

little village, always swimming with water, 
where we spent last winter. So far it has not 
suffered much from the misdeeds of the 
enemy's "noisy gun,'' so-called because its 
shells land with a tremendous crash. Near 

the X farm the odd little village with its 

conical roofs, which the colonial troops 
amused themselves by building, in what may 
be called the Soudanese style of architecture, 
is considerably larger than when I last saw 
it. The territorials from the Morvan began 
this spring to make themselves comfortable 

quarters on the bank of the X brook, on a 

charming site where they are much better off 
than they were before. Everywhere there are 
temporary dwellings of all sorts, from the 
simple hut of branches piled together to the 
little forester's cabin, which sometimes even 
possesses the incredible luxury of glazed 
windows with sashes that open and shut! 

I went to a very touching and beautiful 

ceremony this morning. The bishop of C 

219 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

came to the church at the upper end of the 
town, near the chateau, to celebrate high 
mass in honor of the men who have died here 
in defense of their country. 

The dead of the Argonne ! In no corner of 
our soil has the blood of our soldiers been 
shed with more profusion or more heroism. 
How much courage, how much fortitude have 
been lavished in the forest on which one 
looks down from the chateau, in the narrow 
valleys, on the slopes of the ravines, during 
the bitter struggle which has swayed to and 
fro here during the past year ! 

No part of France, not even Lorraine in 
the region of Gerbeviller, has been more 
systematically looted, ravaged, and destroyed 
than the district which lies between Ste.- 
Menehould and Revigny. Almost every vil- 
lage is in ruins. 

Under the summer sunlight some of these 
wrecks, as at Sermaize and Sommeilles, are 
clothed with a charm and dignity which re- 
calls the antique; it would be easy to be- 

220 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

lieve that twenty centuries are behind their 
crumbling walls. 

But the unfortunate people who used to 
live in them are not particularly alive to 
this sesthetic beauty; having no longer a 
roof to cover them, they must manage to 
exist in their cellars, or else camp in the open 
air. An association of English Quakers, 
co-operating with our government, has come 
generously to their aid, and is busily putting 
up here and there little wooden houses among 
the ruins. 

These can be built with surprising rapid- 
ity, and are most useful, but they certainly 
have an alien look in these old stone villages 
of the Meuse valley. 

By some extraordinary piece of good luck, 
the hordes of the Kronprinz spared the 

pretty chateau of N . It sheltered the 

staff of a general who had to get out as 
fast as he could after the battle of the Mame, 
and consequently had not time to bum the 
house and destroy its contents. It may also 

221 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

be that the presence of the owner of the 
chateau, who remained during the inva- 
sion, had something to do with saving her 
dwelling. 

It must never be said that the Germans 
are entirely devoid of chivalry, for they al- 
lowed the old lady to remain in a wretched 
kennel next to the servants' kitchen. There 
can be no mistake as to this, for they scrawled 
on the door of the den in chalk words, which 
may still be read there: "Apartment re- 
served for the mistress of the chateau. Ad- 
mittance strictly forbidden." Not far away 
a large and handsome building, partly cha- 
teau and partly farmhouse, was another 
Teutonic general's headquarters. Before they 
decamped, the gentlemen of his staff took 
pains to slash the tapestry of the furniture in 
the drawing-room with their swords, as well 
as the leather of the dining-room chairs. 
There happened to be a few pigs in the 
stable which had not been eaten; these 
same officers took the trouble to send for 

222 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

them and to shut them up in the living- 
rooms of the chateau, where the owner found 
them when he came back two days later. 

There is abundant testimony to show that 
this really happened, and perhaps it shows, 
even more than the atrocities committed by 
the Germans, the trend of their minds and 
the quality of what one may call their taste. 

This Argonne country, full of woods and 
springs, is never more delightful than dur- 
ing the height of summer. While men are 
fighting steadily, killing each other with 
might and main, God's humbler creatures 
are enjoying life in perfect security. 

The young partridges pick up their food on 
the roads as freely as if they were only hum- 
ble sparrows; hares dart out from under one's 
feet everywhere; the wild boars, no longer 
himted, show themselves in groups on the 
edges of the forest and in the clearings. 

August 2d. — ^The Germans made an at- 
tack on "cote'' 213 last night, which is in 

223 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

the sector of the Fontaine-aux-Charmes. We 
had noticed their growing activity for several 
days, and finally they bombarded our trenches 
with their heavy artillery and minemverfer, 
having advanced by tunnelling, in order to 
get as close to our lines as they could. 

There was another attack this afternoon 
at St.-Hubert, more to the left, upon a 
sector where there were three battalions, 
and here the Germans made copious use of 
liquid fire. 

A man belonging to a landwehr regiment 
was killed the other day, and we found two 
very interesting letters on his body. The 
first was from his mother. 

AsCHERSLEBEN, July 14th, 1915, 
Papa has been to see your family. Things 
are not going very well; your wife only 
gets, altogether and for everything, twenty- 
one marks a month for herself and her two 
children, barely enough to give them dry 
bread and a little soup. She is obliged to 
leave the children to be looked after by some 

224 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

one else while she goes about looking for 
work. This is very hard to be had, and even 
if she can make sixty pfennigs a day she has 
to spend it all for the children, so she has 
nothing left. 

My dear son, I beg that you will 'go to 
see your colonel and ask him to give you a 
little more money, so that you may send 
some to your family. The distress is great. 
Show him this letter. If he will not, ask 
him to send you back home, that you may 
find work and so keep your family from dying 
of hunger. It takes away all my strength 
to hear those who belong to you crying in 
their misery. Do be so good as to show him 
this letter. There are so many men fighting 
that one more or less will not be noticed. 
For my own part I have given five children 
to the war. So, either manage to send more 
money to your family, that they may not 
starve to death, or else get sent home your- 
self. 

To the same man from his wife, July 6th: 

Impossible to get cabbages or vegetables; 
potatoes will soon be very dear; there is 

225 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

very little fmit. Gherkins for pickling cost 
seven or eight pfennigs — tliere are no more 
cucumbers nor horseradish. Do you ever 
think of what we are able to buy? Money 
has no value any more. Five marks are ex- 
actly as if one had notliing. Wool is ex- 
ceedingly dear. 

I have read tliat one of our newspapers 
means to start an inquiiy in order to find 
out whether the French are gifted witli a 
talent for organization in as high a degree 
as tlie Gennans. 

It is a tliousand pities that this slieet 
could not have sent one of its editors to study 
tlie disti'ibuting railway-station which sup- 
plies our army, for this station or depot is 
really a marvel of organization. Simplicity, 
quickness, absence of red tape and useless 
officials, judicious adaptation of means to 
their ends — everything, m short, which is 
needed m order to make a difficult ser\dce 
work smootlily may be found here. 

Each anny, as every one knows, has its 

226 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

own distributing station, which plays the 
same part in regard to it that the heart does 
in our human organism. The distributing 
station is also like the heart, because it draws 
in and sends out. 

Such a station is the indispensable link be- 
tween the supplying country in the rear 
and the fighting front. From the rear it 
receives men, arms, munitions, provisions, 
clothes, and all sorts of equipments for the 
men, as well as their letters and parcels. 
All of these are distributed over our front, 
and from the front to the rear come men 
on leave, the sick and wounded, arms cind 
equipments no longer fit to be used — in 
short, everything which the fighting units 
want to get out of their way. 

It is not hard to see that such a service 
is necessarily very complicated. Then also 
it is of capital importance; if there is any 
hitch or delay at the station its effect will 
be immediately felt at the front, and the 
combatants may be deprived of such indis- 

227 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

pensable supplies as food, clothing, or am- 
munition. 

Captain R did the honors of his station, 

which he manages as if it were some great 
industry, or a large factory of which he was 
at the head. In the first place he gave us a 
few brief and concise explanations as to the 
way in which the whole machine was run, 
and showed us a plan hanging on the wall 
which made everything clear at a glance. 
Here at different points on the line were the 
principal depots; a large enclosure for the 
live stock, a park for the artillery, another for 
the sappers, a centre for sanitary supplies, 
etc. The course of the incoming and out- 
going currents was marked by arrows — it 
was all perfectly simple and easy to under- 
stand. The next thing was to see how this 
well-planned system actually worked. We 
arrived just as the daily provision trains 
were being made up. Each of these trains 
supplies its own particular unit, and is fitted 
out on a separate track; so many cars for 
hay and oats, so many for other forage, so 

228 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

many for meat, bread, vegetables, and so on. 
These trains will start at night, and arrive 
at their destinations before morning, each 
to be met at its own station by gangs of men 
with wagons who will distribute their con- 
tents to the troops nearest that point. Huge 
barracks built conveniently near the plat- 
forms of the distributing station hold many 
different sorts of merchandise. To go through 
them was like visiting a series of huge shops. 
Everything was clean, everything in perfect 
order; every one knew just what he had to 
do, and did it. The parcel-post service 
alone, the working of which we examined 
in detail, keeps more than thirty soldiers 
busy sorting and classifying. 

Then we went to see the trains which were 
about to start for the front. A hospital 
train was just coming in, bringing sick and 
wounded, for whom surgeons and orderlies 
were waiting, ready to distribute them in 
the proper groups. There were the slightly 
wounded and disabled, who were to remain 
in hospital where they were, others who 

229 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

needed immediate care, others who were to 
be sent further to base hospitals, etc. All 
this sorting out was done very quickly and 
in the most orderly manner. 

Order, rapidity, simplification — those were 
the words which occurred to the mind most 
frequently in the course of our rapid inspec- 
tion. 

This improvised organization answers its 
purposes admirably. At its head is a chief 
who is active, hard-working, responsible, hav- 
ing his whole heart in his work and anxious 
to do as much as possible for every one. 
Under him, working in two or three large 
rooms, are a set of officers who second him 
zealously and to the best of their ability. 
Telephone calls succeed each other almost 
without interruption, replacing reams of 
written reports, to the great advantage of 
the service. 

The department charged with furnishing 
supplies to the army has worked well since 

230 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

the beginning of the war. Even in the heat 
and stress of battle, when conditions are 
most difficult, or when there has been a 
great concentration of troops, the distribu- 
tion of food has been made in good time, 
and the men have received their rations 
promptly. The food of our soldiers is excel- 
lent, and as varied as it is possible to make 
it; this has certainly had a share in main- 
taining the high morale of the army. 

I know the chief commissary of an army 
corps, a man particularly intelligent and re- 
sourceful, who, from one day to the next, 
found the nvimber of men dependent upon 
him for their food exactly doubled. It was 
when the battle of the Yser was at its 
height, and other units were temporarily 
added to his corps, so that it was a question 
of finding eighty thousand rations instead of 
forty thousand. He managed somehow to 
get around the difficulty, and all the men 
were fed without delay. 

But after all the good administration of 

231 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

a commissary depends altogether upon that 
of his distributing railway-station ! 

August 11th. — I was waked very early 
this morning by the combined noises of a 
furious cannonade and a violent thunder- 
storm. 

There has been a severe German attack 
in the ravine of the Fontaine-la-Houyette, 
preceded, as usual by a heavy bombardment 
with large shells and torpedoes. 

End of October, — Nothing happens any 
more in our Argonne, where it used to be 
so lively. The Germans do not make any 
attacks, and one quiet day follows another. 
The sum of our daily losses has fallen to 
zero, probably because we have consolidated 
our defenses, and built excellent bomb-proof 
shelters in case we should be shelled again. 
The forest and the whole country are magnif- 
icent in these autumn days, and the trees 
are clothed in the most marvellous colors. 

232 



JOURNAL OF THE AUTHOR 

November 10th. — Still calm, still nothing 
happening on our front. It certainly is a 
tremendous change. The Germans used for- 
merly to attack us regularly every week or 
ten days, but now they remain strictly on the 
defensive. They scarcely even answer our 
artillery fire. 

What has become of the fine plan to take 
our railway between Ste.-Menehould and 
Verdun? How long it seems since we have 
had a rhodomontade from Major Moraht! 
After so many efforts and sacrifices on their 
part, this sudden inaction is hard to account 
for. The most probable reason for it is that 
the Germans have found out the futility of 
their attempts. Perhaps the German Gen- 
eral Staff, on adding up its losses in Ar- 
gonne, has come to the conclusion that 
thousands of its best soldiers have been 
slaughtered in the vain pursuit of an elusive 
and fantastic goal. 

The cost of throwing military limelight on the 
Kronprinz may seem to them rather excessive. 

233 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

Whatever their reasons may be, the at- 
titude of the Germans in Argonne has changed 
completely. Henceforth they seem likely to 
remain on the defensive here, as on all other 
parts of the western front. The change is 
great, and of significant importance, because 
it calls attention to another check. The 
Germans have not succeeded any better in 
Argonne than they did on the Yser — there 
and here they tried to pass — and we have 
stopped them. 



234 



V 
THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

OF all cities in the world, none gave the 
impression of a stronghold more strik- 
ingly than Verdim. The great encircling 
walls, in which the heavy outer gates were 
much as Vauban left them, compressed the 
town like a mighty cuirass, and in its narrow 
streets, even in time of peace, there were 
always many more soldiers than civilians. 
The Meuse, a stream now forever tragic, 
flows through the middle of the city, but no 
fresh air seemed to follow its current; a 
river is always the chief ornament of any 
other abode of men, but in this place given 
over to war it was only an additional de- 
fense — another wide moat. 

In August and September, 1915, just a 
year after the war began, my military service 
took me frequently to Verdun. At that 

235 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

time it had been for months one of the quietest 
of our sectors; to the right and left, around 
Eparges and in Argonne, the fighting had 
been fierce, and was renewed from time to 
time, but in the Verdun salient, which lay 
between, there was little going on. 

A large part of the population had, in 
consequence, remained in the city. A few 
big German shells fired at very long range 
had, to be sure, fallen within the walls; 
they made a great noise but did little damage, 
and the gallant men and women of Lor- 
raine, whose country has been a battle- 
field for hundreds of years, are not easily 
frightened. Almost all of the shops were 
open. Verdun is known far and wide for its 
sugared almonds, those "dragees'' without 
which no wedding-feast nor christening in 
France is complete, and the confectioners 
went on calmly making them. Some in- 
genious spirits among them had even in- 
vented a large "dragee-bombe,'' 'shaped like 
the shell of our "75'' gun, which opened 

236 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

suddenly with a loud report, scattering a 
harmless shrapnel of almonds. 

The merest glance at the map is enough 
to show that the old citadel bars one of the 
principal highways from Germany into France. 
In the first days of the war, when the Ger- 
mans were making their great offensive in 
Belgium, they took it for granted that Ver- 
dun would fall without a struggle, and at 
the time of their rush on Paris, early in 
September, 1914, the French army defend- 
ing the fortress, commanded by General Sar- 
rail, found itself peculiarly placed. The Kron- 
prinz^s army, spreading down by all the 
roads from the Argonne, had succeeded in 
getting to the south of Revigny; General 
Sarrairs right wing rested on Verdun, so 
that his main force faced west instead of 
north, and in that position played its part 
in the battle of the Mame. After that de- 
feat the Germans retreated as fast as they 
could go; General SarraiFs army pursued 
them to the north, reoccupied Ste.-Mene- 

237 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

hould, and pushed as far as possible into 
the forest of Argonne. 

As the Germans had not succeeded in 
taking Verdun during their great envelop- 
ing advance on Paris, they next tried to at- 
tack it on the other side, from the plain of 
Woevre. An effort on what are called the 
Hants de Meuse gave them possession of 
St.-Mihiel, and if after that they had been 
able to cross the Meuse and push on further, 
Verdun would have been almost entirely 
flanked. But their advance was energetically 
halted. St.-Mihiel marked its farthest limit. 

Thus both attacks on Verdun, one from 
the west by the Argonne, the other from 
the east by the Hants de Meuse, failed com- 
pletely, and the incessant efforts of the 
Kronprinz, kept up during a whole year 
in the forest of Argonne, met with insignif- 
icant results compared with the number of 
lives they cost. At last, unable to get aroimd 
Verdun, no matter from what side they 
made the attempt, the Germans decided 
to attack it in front. 

238 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

One of the great principles of German 
strategy is that the main body of an enemy 
must be sought, attacked, and beaten first 
of all, no matter what else has to be disre- 
garded. This is not a discovery of the Ger- 
mans; they borrowed it from Napoleon, 
who made it the dominant rule of his strat- 
egy, and like all strategical rules, it is based 
on common sense; what is essential must 
be considered before what is merely acces- 
sory. In accordance with this doctrine, in 
the beginning of the war the Germans di- 
rected most of their efforts against France, 
who was, and is still, as the Kaiser declared 
not long ago, "the chief enemy." 

Their first great offensive having met 
with disaster at the battle of the Mame, 
they tried a second a fortnight later at the 
battle of the Aisne, and a third, not long 
afterward, at the battle of the Yser. 

Each of these efforts failed, and toward 
the end of 1914 the Germans found them- 
selves held in check at every point of our 
front. What then shall they do? It stands 

230 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

to reason that they will reconstitute their 
forces, organize new divisions, new army 
corps, and again try to force a decisive issue 
where alone it can be found — that is to 
say, on the French front. France once 
beaten, Germany might consider the war 
at an end, but on the contrary, while France 
holds out, no matter what victories may be 
won elsewhere, the war will go on indefi- 
nitely. 

Let us see what actually happened. In 
the course of 1915 the Germans made some 
very severe attacks, as at Vailly, Soissons, 
the trench fighting at Calonne, and when 
they used gas at Ypres, but these did not 
lead to anything. In the operations on the 
western front it was the Allies who took 
the initiative. 

Nor could the fighting in the Argonne, 
no matter how fierce, be considered as a 
great offensive. At intervals of eight or ten 
days, during the last months of 1914 and 
the first half of 1915, the army of the Kron- 

240 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

prinz, which was composed of some of the 
best German troops, made exceedingly vio- 
lent attacks in the forest of Argonne, in which 
a whole division or even two were engaged. 
Their object was clearly defined; it was to 
gain our trenches one after another, and 
little by little, through incessant effort, to 
push the French line toward the south in 
order to cut, or at least to interfere with, 
the only railway on which Verdun depended 
for her supplies. 

During all that time the German strength 
was chiefly directed against Russia rather 
than France. Why did they give up their 
original plan? Why did they break one of 
the rules of their strategy? It was because 
political and diplomatic reasons intervened 
to counterbalance the judgment of the mili- 
tary authorities, and to force their hand. 
In the spring of 1915 the Russian army had 
reached the southern slopes of the Car- 
pathians, directly menacing Hungary. Italy 
also was on the point of declaring war with 

241 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

Austria; the Dual Monarchy was likely to 
crumble away unless immediately assisted. 
Through her marvellous system of espionage 
Germany was fully informed of the scarcity 
of all sorts of munitions in the Russian army, 
and this was a good reason for attacking 
Russia while she could offer less resistance 
than France. It was therefore decided that 
the offensive should be on the eastern front. 
The movement was conducted with great 
vigor; its importance was undeniable, but 
it could not in any sense be regarded as 
conclusive. 

This attack on the Russians was followed 
by another on the Serbians, and, with the 
effective assistance of the Bulgarians, Serbia 
and Montenegro were overrun. 

But France determined to defend Salo- 
nica at whatever cost, and her ally, Great 
Britain, was of the same mind. A powerful 
and constantly increasing Anglo-French army 
assembled there, and although Germany blus- 
tered she did not dare to strike. The former 

242 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

situation repeated itself — Germany had made 
an advance without gaining any decisive re- 
sult. 

The end of 1915 brought her back, whether 
she would or no, to what was after all the 
essential point of the war — her struggle 
with France. The German people had been 
fed with false hopes and dazzled by glittering 
visions. They were told that when once the 
road to Constantinople was open the con- 
quest of Egypt was certain, and Turkey and 
Bulgaria would furnish unlimited reserves to 
crush Germany's enemies. Those visions 
gradually faded, and reality had to be faced 

— the reality that imtil she had won a great 
victory over France Germany could not 
hope to end the war successfully. 

Therefore, toward the end of 1915, the 
Germans determined to do what they had 
not attempted during the whole of the year 

— to make a supreme effort against the 
French front. 

It is important to keep always in mind 

243 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

that they did this because they could not 
do otherwise; they had not, like England, 
Russia, and ourselves, resources which al- 
lowed them to wait; they knew that time 
was fighting not for but against them. The 
docile German press continued to assert 
that, as their armies occupied Belgium, Po- 
land, and part of France, they were sub- 
stantially victorious; in order to win it 
was not necessary that they should attack; 
they had but to keep the ground they al- 
ready held. 

The simple fact that the German General 
Staff felt obliged to undertake a great of- 
fensive against us proves the falsity of these 
asseverations. The staff was fully aware 
that it would be most difficult, in fact al- 
most impossible, to force the French posi- 
tions; its officers knew that lives by the 
hundreds of thousands must be sacrificed 
in order to gain a doubtful result. As, in 
face of such knowledge, an offensive was 
decided upon, it is self-evident that no other 

244 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

course was open, especially as an attack on 
Salonica was found to be impracticable. 

Once it was settled that a thrust forward 
should be made, the point of attack had to 
be chosen. Why was that choice Verdun? 
There are many reasons to account for it. 
It was absolutely necessary that the French 
front should be penetrated at some espe- 
cially important point. Also, since the Ger- 
mans occupied St.-Mihiel, the sector of 
Verdun formed a salient which laid it open 
to a possible attack from three sides at the 
same time. Our front once broken through, 
both wings of the German army could en- 
velop us and our defeat would become a 
disaster. Moreover, the sector of Verdun 
is cut in two from north to south by the 
Meuse, which gives the attacking party a 
distinct advantage. If troops on the right 
side of the river, which is the more exposed, 
were forced to retreat hurriedly,' they could 
only do so by means of a limited number of 
bridges. In winter the Meuse often over- 

245 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

flows its banks and floods the surrounding 
country, which would make the building of 
additional bridges a slow and difficult busi- 
ness; if the enemy should press on vigor- 
ously, bringing his heavy artillery to bear 
on the spots where he knows these bridges 
must be placed, retreat would become an 
exceedingly risky matter. Military history 
has often proved the truth of this, the battle 
of Leipsic being one of the most striking 
examples. 

If we look at the railways we shall see yet 
another reason for the German decision. 
In ordinary times Verdun is supplied by two 
main railway lines, one running from south 
to north, by St.-Mihiel, the other going from 
west to east, by Ste.-Menehould. The first 
line was partly in the hands of the Germans 
since their occupation of St.-Mihiel. The 
second was exposed to the fire of the Ger- 
man batteries between St.-Mihiel and Verdun, 
especially in the region of Aubreville and 
Dombasle, where it makes a sharp elbow 

246 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

northward, and it would run great risk of 
being cut there. There is also a third line 
making a diagonal from Revigny to Verdun, 
but that is scarcely worth counting. As it 
was only meant to serve local interests, its 
capacity is very limited; it zigzags cheerfully 
across the fields like a drunken man, so much 
so that the country people call it "le tor- 
tillard'' — the twister. 

The Germans supposed that the defenders 
of Verdun would be seriously embarrassed 
by this inadequate railway system. Many 
trains are constantly needed in order to feed 
a large army, and above all to keep it sup- 
plied with munitions, and our enemy hoped 
that these trains could not be provided. 
But they did not take into account our ad- 
mirable French roads, nor the ingenuity of 
our General Staff, which makes marvellous 
use of our network of highways, and had 
for some time been considering the pos- 
sibility of supplying the needs of Verdim 
by motor-trucks alone. This motor-truck 

247 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

service is one of the best-regulated and most 
successful developments of the present war. 
Its creation and growth were only a matter 
of a few months, and it works to perfection; 
the officers responsible for it have certainly 
shown that a faculty for rapid and intelli- 
gent organization is a privilege not exclu- 
sively reserved for Germans. Any lingering 
doubt would be dispelled by a visit to one of 
our "army zones." An apparently endless 
procession of these trucks stretches out for 
miles along the road, each keeping its proper 
distance from the one ahead of it, and all 
moving with absolute precision and disci- 
pline. When the fighting began at Verdun 
thousands of them were in readiness, and by 
their means our great army was kept fully 
supplied with food and ammunition. 

The German High Command had an- 
other reason for attacking Verdun, besides 
those of home politics and military strategy. 
Although they have since denied it, they 
intended to take the city in a few days, and 

248 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

thus prove to all the world the irresistible 
power of Germany. The neutral nations 
which were still hesitating would then make 
haste to range themselves beside her. The 
Teutonic General Staff is past master in the 
art of exaggeration, and when one remembers 
the capital which was made out of the ad- 
vance on Fort Douaumont it is easy to im- 
agine to what lyric flights the German press 
would have been inspired by the fall of 
Verdun. 

With the sole exception of Paris, "Fer- 
toun," as the Germans call it, has been more 
spoken of in their newspapers than any 
other French city. Half a dozen times since 
the war began its fall had been announced; 
each time the news was false, but now the 
German General Staff resolved to make it 
true. 

The plan of the attack was to be a repe- 
tition, with more crushing force, of the vic- 
torious offensive made in the spring of 1915 
on the Russian army in Galicia. A mass of 

249 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

infantry, supported by heavy artillery, was 
to be hurled against the centre of our posi- 
tions; our front once broken, both wings 
of the German army would close in on the 
salient of Verdun like a vise, making our 
retreat disastrous, if not impossible. 

In order to make sure of this result, all 
available forces were concentrated. Toward 
the end of 1915 some of the heavy guns 
which had been used in the Russian cam- 
paign were brought back, and as many as 
could be spared were withdrawn from the 
western front. It is estimated that there 
were two thousand guns, all of large caliber, 
in the appalling mass of artillery thus con- 
centrated. The ordinary field-piece was little 
used; the work was done chiefly by those 
much heavier: "105," "210," "305," "380," 
up to "420." It was expected that this 
deluge of fire would annihilate our trenches 
and the men in them, rendering it impos- 
sible for us to hold our positions. 

For this enormous amount of artillery 

250 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

enormous quantities of munitions were pro- 
vided; great piles of shells and bombs were 
accumulated in every possible place through- 
out the region which the Germans held. 
The supplies thus in readiness, they pro- 
ceeded to organize the assaulting army. 

As the Germans have not an inexhaust- 
ible supply of men, they could no longer 
make new divisions and army corps, as 
they had done at the battle of the Yser. 
For three or four months they had been 
withdrawing their finest corps from other 
fronts in order to make them into a phalanx 
such as Mackensen had thrown against the 
Russians. These corps were the Fifteenth, 
brought back from the region of Ypres; the 
Eighteenth, from the Somme; the Seventh 
Reserve Corps, from the Aisne; and the 
Third, part of which had been on the Ser- 
bian front, but had done no fighting. All 
these corps were allowed to rest at a distance 
from the front, in comfortable quarters, and 
the men were abundantly fed; some of the 

251 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

German prisoners said they had been given 
double rations of meat and triple of coffee. 
One of these corps, the Fifteenth, which is 
in garrison at Strasburg in time of peace, 
ranks with the corps usually garrisoning 
Metz as among the best in the army. 

In November and December, 1914, during 
the battle of the Yser, I was in the sector of 
Ypres, directly facing this corps, and it was 
the opinion of competent judges that no 
troops in the German army fought with 
more dash and vigor, while their commander. 
General von Daimling, was of exceptional 
ability. An order of the day was found on 
one of our prisoners at Verdun, in which 
this general announced to his men that the 
decisive moment had come at last, and that 
their irresistible attack on Verdun would at 
once put an end to the war. 

These four corps, intended especially for 
the assault, were largely made up of the 
most vigorous soldiers from the class of 
1916, who had been drilled and trained with 
the utmost care. The formations of officers 

252 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

and non-commissioned officers had been en- 
tirely made over. During the last months 
of 1915 the German General Staff was ob- 
viously careful of officers, knowing that they 
could not easily be replaced, but in the at- 
tack on Verdun, which was meant to be 
conclusive, the officers received orders to 
sacrifice themselves without reserve. They 
were required to lead their men in order to 
make the assault more impetuous and over- 
whelming. 

These four army corps were thus brought 
into the sector of Verdun and inserted, like 
a wedge, into the army of the Kronprinz, 
which crowded to right and left in order 
to make room for them. Three of his corps 
were also to attack, making seven army 
corps ready for the great offensive. 

The positions occupied by the French 
just before the great battle are well known, 
having been accurately given in an official 
publication from our General Headquarters, 
made in the Bulletin des Armees. 

Our left, starting from the Meuse, rested 

253 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

on Brabant, Consenvoye, and Les Caures; 
on our centre we held the wood of Ville, 
L'Herbebois, and Omes; our right included 
Maucourt, Mogeville, the pool of Braux, 
and the wood of Hautes Charrieres. Behind 
this first line was a second, taking in the 
village of Samogneux, hill (or "cote") 344, 
the Mormont farm, Beaumont, La Wavrille, 
Les Fosses, Le Chaume, Les Carrieres, Bezon- 
vaux, Grand Chenas, and Dieppe. Still 
farther to the rear, with the village of Bras 
as a landmark, came the line of the forts of 
Verdun; Douaimiont, Hardaumont, Vaux, La 
Laufee, and Eix. Between them and our 
second line a series of counter-sloping trenches 
ran from Douaumont to Louvemont, on the 
"cotes'' of Poivre and Talou. 

If our first line is followed on the map it 
will be seen to form an arc of a vast circle, 
beginning at the Meuse, stretching to its 
centre at Verdim, and ending as far up as 
Etain, in the plain of Woevre. In this arc 
the sector most fiercely attacked was that 

254 



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COMMERC 



THE SURROUNDING REGION. 




VERDUN AND THK SURROUNDING RKCION. 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

between Brabant and Omes, which forms a 
decided salient. Artillery fire could sweep 
it on three sides: from the heights of Mont- 
faucon and the wood of Forges on the west, 
where it made a noticeable curve inward; 
from the north; and also from the east. 

It must be borne in mind that, from its 
nature, this first line of ours could only be 
held against a violent attack with the greatest 
difficulty, and this is true of our second line 
as well. The part of prudence would there- 
fore be to fall back gradually from one line 
to another, not risking a decisive engage- 
ment until a favorable position could be 
reached. This was what our General Staff 
decided to do. 

The first four weeks of the war (August and 
September, 1914) and the first four days of 
the battle of Verdun (February 21st-25th) 
resemble each other strongly in general out- 
line, and in what may be termed the rhythm 
of their operations. I wish to call attention 
to this, because to my mind it is the domi- 

255 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

nant and essential feature of these great 
military events. In August, 1914, as in 
February, 1916, the Germans made extraor- 
dinary preparations; they studied the plan 
of their offensive in all its details; they ac- 
cumulated a formidable number of men and 
an inexhaustible amount of ammunition; 
their officers and soldiers alike were ready 
to throw themselves into the attack with 
the greatest impetuosity. The method and 
the force of this offensive were so irresistible 
that the French High Command found it 
necessary to fall back, and some ground was 
given up in order that a successful stand 
might be made later. It was yielding a side 
issue; the important, the vital point, was to 
win the battle finally; whether a few leagues 
or kilometres more or less to the north or 
south was of no consequence. Our troops 
retired until the favorable moment came, 
and then, when the Germans were sure we 
were beaten, we struck with our full force, 
and at the crucial moment defeat was turned 
into victory. From that time the Germans 

256 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

were stopped, and in several places driven 
back; all their efforts and sacrifices were 
useless, and only served to mark the im- 
portance of their check. 

That was the rhythm of the first four 
weeks of the war, up to the battle of the 
Mame, and it was also the rhythm of the 
first four days of the battle of Verdun, up 
to the recapture of the Fort of Douaumont 
by our Twentieth Corps. 

First act: The French fall back as the 
Germans advance. 

Second act: A decisive battle ends in 
victory for the French. 

Third act: The Germans are held in 
check; they may move to and fro, but they 
can make no serious advance, and will wear 
themselves out to no purpose. 

I. The German Attack and the 
French Retreat 

On the 21st of February, at a quarter 
past seven in the morning, the bombard- 
ment of Verdun began, and continued with 

257 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

an intensity which made the German fire 
during the war, even at the battles of Cham- 
pagne and Artois, seem like child's play in 
comparison. The number of pieces of heavy 
artillery which fired incessantly was stupen- 
dous; French aviators flying over the Ger- 
man lines agreed in reporting that in the 
region to the north of our positions, espe- 
cially in Spincourt and the woods adjoin- 
ing, it was "like a display of fireworks." 
Such an incessant cannonade came from the 
little wood of Gremilly, north of La Jumelle, 
that our observers had to give up marking 
on their cards the different batteries in ac- 
tion; they were everywhere; the guns stood 
almost wheel to wheel. That went on for 
hours, and at four o'clock in the afternoon 
the firing became still more intense; it was 
as if thousands of rockets were being sent 
up for the "bouquet" of the show. In order 
to make our positions untenable, asphyxiat- 
ing and lachrymatory bombs were mingled 
with the heavy projectiles, while six captive 

258 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

balloons floated over the German lines and 
directed their aim. Our first lines were 
almost levelled by this avalanche of steel — 
trenches, parapets, shelters, no matter how 
well made, were utterly destroyed. Then, 
toward five o'clock, the first infantry attack 
was launched. 

The Germans were convinced that their 
infernal fire had made it impossible for our 
infantry to hold their ground, and counted 
on occupying our positions almost without 
resistance on our part. Most of the work 
would have been done by their artillery; 
they need only advance and occupy ground 
which had been evacuated. The German 
tactics during their attacks on Verdun were 
all based on this conviction. The artillery 
must strike systematically and with crush- 
ing force on every point of our line, making 
a zone of death around all our centres of 
resistance. When the destruction seemed 
complete, part of the infantry was sent 
forward to examine the effect of the firing. 

259 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

Each recohnoitring group was made up of 
about fifteen men; behind them came the 
bomb-throwers, and after them again the 
first great wave of infantry. In this instance 
they did not sufficiently take into account 
the magnificent courage of our soldiers. In 
spite of the blasting fire they stuck to their 
positions, making the most of every little in- 
equality of the ground, and crouching low in 
the yawning holes made by the great shells. 
As the Germans advanced their ranks were 
mown down like grass by our mitrailleuses. 
Then the bombardment began again. No 
sooner was one attack repulsed than another 
came on, and at the end of the first day the 
enemy had a foothold in some of the trenches 
of our first line, and in a few places had even 
got as far as our supporting trenches. They 
had also taken the woods of Haumont and 
Caures, but the southern part of Caures 
was won back by the splendid bravery of 
Lieutenant-Colonel Driant and his chasseurs. 
In the region of Soumazzanes, the wood of 

260 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

Ville and L'Herbebois, our supporting line 
still held firm. 

The morning of the 22d was cold and 
snowy, and about half past seven the Ger- 
mans began to warm us, in the western part 
of the sector, by throwing jets of liquid fire 
into the wood of Consenvoye. Thanks to 
these "flammenwerfer'' they managed to 
get to the bottom of a ravine; in Herbebois 
and the wood of Ville the hand-to-hand 
fighting was bloody and determined. The 
German artillery fire became still more vio- 
lent; great gusts of flame swept over Angle- 
mont, the Mormont farm, and La Wavrille. 
The village of Haumont was in the hottest 
of it; but the gallant men who held it stood 
close around their colonel and fought until 
the last; it was six o'clock in the afternoon 
before the enemy could get into its ruins. 
By the end of the day we had lost the wood 
of Ville, but we still held most of Herbebois 
and La Wavrille. 

The troops had no protection; main and 

261 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

communication trenches, shelters, centres of 
defense — all were battered to pieces; it 
was fighting in the open. Night fell; in the 
cold and the snow, under the unceasing 
bombardment, our men hastily dug them- 
selves in again. It was absolutely necessary 
to stop the German advance, in order to 
give our reserves time to come up; the men 
knew it, and although they were tired out 
they worked, as they had fought, like de- 
mons. 

During the night of the 22d-23d we evac- 
uated Brabant. The village of Samogneux 
was under such heavy fire that a counter- 
attack on our part was impossible, and we 
were objiged to remain on the defensive. 
To the eastward the Germans had got 
within eight hundred metres of the farms of 
Anglemont and Mormont, and were shelling 
them with their 305-mm. and 380-mm. guns. 
It was an infernal rain of fire, but with ad- 
mirable energy and discipline our men held 
their positions. 

262 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

At six in the morning of the 23d the enemy 
attacked La Wavrille and was repulsed. In 
L'Herbebois the fighting was desperate all 
day. The northern border of this wood is 
a thick coppice about five hundred metres 
wide; the Germans, who wanted to carry 
this position at any cost, attacked here in 
great force and in close formation. The 
French waited until they were within fifty 
metres and then opened on them with volley- 
firing by platoons; our mitrailleuses and 
"75's" also fired at close range into the solid 
mass. Whole ranks were wiped out at a 
time; it was downright slaughter. This 
first attack having failed, four others were 
launched, with the same result. The fighting 
became furious beyond description. In one 
of our communicating trenches, four grena- 
diers threw bombs steadily for more than 
twenty hours; it was death for whoever tried 
to pass them. The Germans, in spite of all 
their efforts and their reckless squandering 
of life, could not gain a foot of ground. But 

263 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

unfortunately, as night fell, after incessant 
attacks, they succeeded in taking La Wa- 
vrille, and the holders of Herbebois were 
obliged to fall back or risk being flanked. 
The men, fighting-mad, refused to retreat, 
choosing rather to die where they stood. 

Again, on the 24th, the Germans ad- 
vanced and again we fell back, having evac- 
uated the village of Samogneux during the 
night, as it was in a very dangerous position. 
A French regiment was stationed astride of 
the road from Samogneux to Vacherauville, 
with orders to hold "cote" 344, whatever 
happened. The Germans knew how im- 
portant this road was and did their best to 
get it. Five or six times they tried to make 
their way out of Samogneux, each time to 
be met by the combined fire of our infantry, 
our mitrailleuses, and our artillery. Their 
losses were frightful, and it was evening be- 
fore they succeeded in fastening themselves 
on the "cote." By that time the village 
of Beaumont, the wood of Fosses, and Le 

264 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

Chaume had been already occupied for some 
hours. 

At twenty minutes past two in the after- 
noon a large German force poured out be- 
tween Louvemont and "cote" 347; the vil- 
lage of Omes, attacked on three sides at 
once (a danger to which it had always been 
exposed), was almost surrounded and had 
to be evacuated. That threw us back on 
the line of the forts. 

The Germans were sure they had won 
this greatest war game. One last effort 
would make them masters of the heights 
above Verdun, and our army would be 
forced to retire in disorder. 

II. The Counter-Attack and the 
French Recovery 

And yet all the elements which were to 
come to our rescue were already at hand. 
Our High Command had had time to bring 
up important reserves, which, coming into 
action at the right time and place, would 

265 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

at once change the situation. These re- 
serves could not have been used effectively 
until the real object of the enemy was clear; 
it might be that he was only making a feint 
before Verdun and would strike his chief 
blow at another point of our lines. It was 
necessary that he should come on, and thus 
show his hand. The heroic resistance of our 
men for three days to numbers much greater 
than their own, their fierce disputing of every 
foot of ground, their wearing down of the 
German resistance had given our reinforce- 
ments this necessary time. 

On that day of desperate fighting, the 
24th, Major-General de Castelnau left head- 
quarters in order to decide upon the spot 
what measures he should take. He came; 
he made up his mind without hesitation. 
His orders were that the reserves should 
come into action at once, and at whatever 
cost stop the German advance on our prin- 
cipal lines. 

That same day General Petain arrived, 

266 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

with all his staff, to take active command 
of the troops defending Verdun. 

In one of my former chapters, "The 
French Offensive in Champagne," I de- 
scribed this general, one of the glories of 
our army and of France. "He is tall, slim, 
young-looking, with an air of extreme dis- 
tinction, quick, incisive speech, and resolute 
blue eyes. Whenever those eyes of his light 
on a new face he feels the immediate need to 
label and classify it, and store away the 
image in some pigeonhole of his marvel- 
lously lucid memory, where thereafter it 
will always have its distinctive place. Look- 
ing at him and listening to him, one has the 
impression that the art of warfare is above 
all things a matter of precision, forethought, 
and tenacity. The masters of military 
science, the men predestined to shine in 
war, are those in whom the balance between 
brain and character, between understanding 
and willing, is most petfectly adjusted." 

One of our finest army corps was im- 

267 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

patiently waiting to be sent into action. 
Since the war began it had been in battle 
wherever fighting was to be found; in Flan- 
ders, in Artois, and in Champagne, winning 
laurels everywhere. 

This corps was now thrown into the fur- 
nace without hesitation. The German ad- 
vance was checked; their offensive broken; 
they could go no farther. 

It was bitter cold, and drifting snow hin- 
dered the march of our columns. The Ger- 
man artillery tried to stop the coming of 
our reinforcements by a formidable curtain 
fire and by shelling our rear lines inces- 
santly. But our men, knowing the value 
of those fateful hours, marched with eager 
hearts, regardless of all obstacles. As an 
official communique said: "It was like the 
battle of the Mame — the cry of 'Forward !' 
gave them superhuman courage." 

The principal field of the great fight was 
the table-land of Douaumont, which is to 
the battle of Verdun what the marshes of 

268 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

St.-Gond, the Chateau of Mondement, and 
the plain of Fere-Champenoise were to the 
battle of the Mame. 

On the morning of the 25th the Germans 
made a fierce attack on the "cote" of Poivre, 
carrying the villages of Louvemont and 
Bezonvaux. Before Douaumont the fight- 
ing was fiendish; by five o'clock in the after- 
noon the village seemed to be surrounded. 
While this violent struggle was going on, a 
party of Brandenburgers, belonging to the 
Third Corps, managed to creep up to the 
fort of Douaumont, and held on there. 

The Teutonic General Staff forthwith 
trumpeted to the world that "the armored 
fort of Douaumont, the comer-stone of the 
French defense of Verdun, has been carried 
by a Brandenburg regiment*'; and wireless 
messages everywhere proclaimed this vic- 
tory as positive. But it was only temporary. 
By the time the news was spread abroad 
our troops had thrust back the enemy by a 
vigorous counter-attack, and were closing 

269 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

around the Brandenburgers. A bloody strug- 
gle followed; the Germans, knowing how 
much depended on it, did their utmost to 
widen the breach they had made toward 
the fort of Douaumont; the village of Douau- 
mont was taken and retaken, but all the 
German effort and bloodshed were in vain 
— henceforth their advance was definitely 
controlled. 

III. The Fighting on Our Wings 
AND THE German Check 

When the Germans found that their frontal 
attack was not the conclusive success for 
which they had striven, they decided, after 
a pause, to attack both our wings, on the 
left bank of the Meuse. This movement 
was to be carried out by the army of the 
Kronprinz, with the help of the picked 
corps which had joined it. In an order of 
the day dated March 4th the Kronprinz 
exhorted his troops to prepare themselves 
for the supreme effort necessary to take 

270 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

Verdun, "the heart of France." Our posi- 
tions on the left bank of the Meuse now 
formed more or less of a salient, compared 
to those on its right bank, where our troops 
had been obliged to draw back, and against 
this salient the German attack was accord- 
ingly directed. 

The same movement which had taken 
place on the right side now repeated itself. 
We held our first line only long enough to 
retard the German advance, but when they 
reached our principal positions at Mort- 
Homme and "cote'* 304 they could go no 
farther. Then began a series of very bloody 
struggles. The wood of Corbeaux, for in- 
stance, was taken and retaken and lost over 
and over again, the enemy only succeeding 
in holding it after a third attack. 

On the 14th of March, new German di- 
visions having come up, another fierce at- 
tempt was made. Mort-Homme was shelled 
even more heavily than at the beginning of 
the battle; every infernal modem projectile, 

271 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

time and percussion bombs, asphyxiating 
and lachrymatory shells were hurled on our 
positions; one hundred and twenty were 
counted in a single minute. 

When at last, about three in the afternoon, 
the German infantry swept forward, most 
of the men in our trenches were half suf- 
focated and almost buried alive. "Cote" 
265 was taken, but the little peak 295 re- 
mained in our hands. 

While the fighting on the left bank of the 
Meuse was going on, an attack was also 
made on the fort and village of Vaux, on the 
right side of the river, east of Douaumont, 
and on the 8th of March a vigorous offensive 
gave the German infantry possession of the 
firat houses of the village, from which they 
were almost entirely driven out by a bril- 
liant counter-attack on our part. At no time 
did they get near the fort, which lies to the 
rear; a fact which did not prevent their 
authorities from issuing the following sensa- 
tional communique: "The 6th and 19th 

272 




RELIEF MAT OF LE MORT-IlOMilH AND THE HILLS NiOKTII OF VEKDIIN. 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

Regiments of Posen Reserves, led by General 
von Guretski-Comitz, have stormed the ar- 
mored fort of Vaux, and have also taken 
many other fortifications in that neighbor- 
hood." 

It so happened that, at the very time 
when this "news'' was being rushed every- 
where, one of the officers of our General 
Staff went into the fort of Vaux and was 
able to assure himself that it had not been 
attacked, and that the troops holding it 
were quite undisturbed. Our General Staff 
thereupon immediately contradicted the lying 
report in the most positive manner. 

Again, as in the case of the Sussex, the 
intentional bad faith of our enemy was ex- 
posed, but that did not disconcert him; it 
was then announced that the fort had been 
taken, and retaken later by a French counter- 
attack. It was not necessary for us to re- 
take Vaux, for the simple reason that we had 
never lost it. 

Day followed day, and the attacks on our 

273 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

right and left wings led to no more decisive 
result than those made at first on our centre. 
The German assaulting corps, which had 
borne the brunt of the fighting, were dec- 
imated and worn out; some of the regiments 
had lost as high as sixty per cent of their 
officers and men. It was absolutely neces- 
sary that they should be sent to the rear to 
rest and be reorganized. 

But the officers of the German General 
Staff were well aware that the whole world 
had its eyes upon Verdun. They knew they 
were playing for a high stake, and that the 
outcome of the war depended to a great 
extent on the mighty struggle on both sides 
of the Meuse. Therefore, rather than ac- 
knowledge failure, they decided to redouble 
their efforts. New divisions were hurried 
forward to replace those which were ex- 
hausted, and on the 9th of April another 
very violent attack was hurled against our 
positions on the left bank of the river, at 

cote" 304. But there were no longer suf- 

274 



<< ^A^ 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

ficient reserves to give this thrust the power 
and scope of those in the beginning. All 
that could be done was to bring up one di- 
vision after another, to relieve those which 
were most exhausted. Heavy artillery could 
be used like a battering-ram against one or 
other of our positions, but there was no 
longer any question of a general advance. 
I wish to dwell upon this point, for a new 
phase of the battle has begun. 

In order to be convinced of the magni- 
tude of the German failure, one has but to 
follow the successive changes in the tone of 
the Teutonic press as the struggle dragged on. 

It was taken for granted that the advance 
on Verdun would strike us like a thunder- 
bolt. The Kronprinz said so in a procla- 
mation, and the Kaiser, as usual, made an 
inspiring visit to the army about to fall on 
us. In a Bavarian newspaper, the Munchener 
Neueste Nachrichten, Colonel Medicus proudly 
wrote later: "Our ring of steel is visibly 
tightening around the fortress; we shall 

275 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

therefore be able to record a great and deci- 
sive victory, of which the consequences will 
be felt at once; of this the governor of Ver- 
dun must be sadly certain." This was at the 
time when the German wireless stations were 
busily spreading the news broadcast that 
"the armored fort of Douaumont, the comer- 
stone of the defense of Verdun," had been 
carried by storm under the eyes of the Kaiser. 
The press, usually so carefully muzzled, was 
allowed to say what it chose: the Rhei- 
nische Westfdlische Zeitung declared that "the 
taking of the fort of Douaumont, which 
breaks the circle of forts at its most vulner- 
able point, makes it possible to predict the 
speedy fall of the fortress itself." The 
Frankfurter Zeitung improved on this fore- 
cast by saying: "It is clear that men who 
have not recoiled before the defenses of 
Douaumont, one of the strongest fortresses 
in France, will not be stopped by any slighter 
resistance." 
As time went on, and Verdun did not 

276 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

fall, it became necessary to put a damper 
on this enthusiasm. The German press 
was therefore ordered to exhort the public 
to possess its soul in patience. All the mili- 
tary critics explained carefully to their readers 
that the delay was foreseen and intentional. 
The Berliner Tageblatt of March 15th said: 
"Spoiled by the extraordinary rapidity of 
the campaign which made us masters of the 
Russian fortresses last summer, we some- 
times make the mistake of comparing it 
with the present fighting on the western 
front, which has for its objective the fall of 
Verdun." 

Days lengthened into weeks, and the for- 
tress still stood; so the press faced about, 
gravely affirming that the General Staff 
had never really meant to take Verdun at 
all, and that any such statement was a 
malevolent and perfidious invention of the 
French. The staff had only attacked at that 
point in order to prevent the general offen- 
sive for which the French were making ready 

277 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

These contradictions are very significant 
and enlightening, because they bear witness 
to the hopes, the fears, and the disappoint- 
ment of the German people from day to day. 

To sum up one may say: First, Germany 
knew that a war of erosion must of necessity 
be to her disadvantage, because time was 
working against her, and the resources of 
England, Russia, and France were increas- 
ing, while her own steadily diminished. She 
therefore meant to end the struggle by a 
smashing blow, and chose the sector of 
Verdun in order to deal this blow to her 
"chief enemy," France. After masterly prep- 
aration she had accumulated in this sector 
all the resources in men and munitions of 
which she could dispose. The result of the 
first four days of the battle was in her favor, 
but as soon as our reserves came up her ad- 
vance was checked. Willing to sacrifice 
any number of lives in order to win, she 
has drawn ruthlessly on her reserves, and 
at the end of three months of carnage she 

278 



THE BATTLE OF VERDUN 

finds herself in the position of a desperate 
gambler who has risked his fortune on a 
single stake, only to find that luck has turned 
against him. 



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